by Glen Carter
The brutality had been ferocious. The priest’s wounds as well as the blood on the inside of the church suggested he’d been pistol-whipped before he and the others were herded upstairs. One bullet each to the forehead. The nuns had been raped, two of the bodies had been posed in a macabre display of self-mutilation. They were strangers to Jack, but that didn’t diminish his outrage. It was inhuman beyond words.
Her sobbing abated; Mercedes tilted her head back, allowing the sun to dry her face. She’d made astonishingly bad choices. So much had changed for her, her life a sad wreck. Montello had seen to that with obsessive fervour.
“Your ex-boyfriend holds a mighty big grudge,” Jack said, regretting it immediately. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”
Mercedes glared at him, a copy of Kaitlin in looks only.
Jack averted his gaze to the lush verdant hillsides that surrounded Trinity Church, a place of grotesque massacre. He thought about the children and wondered if they’d be safe. He’d seen the same worry in Mercedes’ tired face a moment before. Jack was thinking about the children when he heard Seth’s urgent shout.
The rectory at the back of the church was a small room, monastic in its appointments. A desk was cluttered with strewn and torn papers. There was a framed papal photograph on the wall above the desk and below the Pontiff, a crucifix. It seemed right that God’s anointed representative on earth held higher position than man’s sin against the Son of God. A filing cabinet was tipped over in the corner of the room. The drawers had fallen open and paper was spilled across the floor.
Mercedes took it all in. “Father Govia’s office,” she said. “We were never permitted here.” She walked over to the desk and gently touched it.
Seth sat on the floor, back against a door which Jack guessed led outside. He studied the contents of a folder. “Look what I found.” Seth passed some of the papers to Jack. They looked official, something produced by bureaucrats with rubber-stamped dates and faded signatures. The typed documents were frayed and discoloured, no doubt custodial red tape for the children in Govia’s care. One of the documents appeared to be a birth certificate, the child’s name in fading block letters, the date of her birth. Jack’s eyes widened when he read it. He then fumbled at a second piece of yellowed paper which was stapled to it. It was a vaccination record for a number of childhood diseases. Jack brought the paper closer to his face. There were two children listed on the health document. One of them was Mercedes Mendoza, aged eight months, the same name which appeared on the birth certificate. The second child was also eight months of age. Another female.
Jack stared at the date of birth alongside the second name. Then he smiled broadly. Tentatively he offered the papers to Mercedes. “Your sister’s name is Angelica,” he said simply.
Trembling, she took the documents from Jack and brought a hand to her mouth. She paced as she examined them. There were two names on the vaccination record, Mercedes and Angelica Mendoza, both birthdays identical. Healthy and vaccinated at eight months old. Mercedes stared disbelievingly at Jack and Seth, and then read the vaccination schedule again, mouthing the names. The birth certificate listed Eva Magdalene Mendoza as her mother. Her father was Argus Peter O’Rourke – Kaitlin’s father, according to Jack. Tears pooled in her eyes as she pressed the paper against her chest. She had never been alone. There had always been someone.
Kaitlin O’Rourke and Mercedes Mendoza were sisters. Jack had known that as soon as he saw Mercedes, and now the vaccination record confirmed it. Suddenly everything made sense. “Raspov knew the videotape of you on that beach was his ticket to you,” Jack said. “He knew there was a connection between Kaitlin and you, because he had actually met you both – separately. Finding adoption records would have been easy stuff for a former KGB spook.”
Seth handed Mercedes a tissue. She took it. “The explosion.”
Jack knew where she was headed.
“There was no body?”
“None,” Jack said. “But that doesn’t mean Kaitlin survived. There were others–”
“Yes, I understand,” Mercedes said, irritated. “But you cannot say…say a hundred percent…that my sister was killed. No body.”
Jack shook his head. “No body. Nothing’s a hundred percent. If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t be here.”
Mercedes sat on the edge of the desk, suddenly deflated. “But you thought I was her. This is why you came to Colombia.”
Jack’s blue eyes couldn’t hide his own misgivings. He lowered his head, brought a hand to his face as if to wipe away her logic. “You’re right. It’s why I came.” She was right, of course. But things were different now, no longer driven by that illusion. Things had changed. The journey – wherever it led – still had legs. Imperative. Jack was suddenly infused by new energy. “Kaitlin took a phone call in her room. I overheard her talking to someone just before we left the hotel. I’m certain she lied about who it was. It’s possible – just possible – she went to meet someone outside the restaurant before the explosion. What if she had?” He plopped down next to Mercedes on the desk. “What if it had something to do with you? Or her mother? What if she wasn’t in the restaurant at all when it happened?”
Seth looked doubtful. “That doesn’t explain the fact no one’s heard from her since it happened.”
“I know…I know what you’re saying, Seth, and I don’t have all the answers. Shit, how could I? What if, for instance, she was being held, or unable to make contact? That’s possible – right? This is Colombia, after all.”
“I suppose,” Seth replied, staring at the documents Mercedes held in her hand.
“A most dangerous place,” Mercedes added. “For everyone.”
Seth pulled himself up from the floor and reached out for the papers. “Please.” He took them, then quickly scanned the vaccination record. After a moment he looked up and smiled.
Jack moved closer. “What?”
Seth jabbed a finger at the vaccination record. “Look right here.”
It took a moment before Jack understood. Of course. How could he have missed it?
Seth pushed the paper at Mercedes. “Where you were born. Look. Maradona. Bolivar Department.”
Mercedes grabbed the document and studied it again. “This cannot be true. I was born in Bogotá. My parents died there in a car accident.”
Jack allowed her the time she needed to process what she was looking at, to understand the lies she had been told – for reasons unknown to them – by Father Govia. The truth was in her hands – for years squirreled away here in Govia’s office. Her father was alive. An Irishman living in America. Maybe Eva Mendoza was alive as well. If that were true, why wasn’t she told? Why had she been abandoned? These were things she’d need to know. Did she have a living sister?
Jack suddenly jumped up from the desk. Seth had clicked to it too. Both had a worried expression on their faces. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking?” Jack said.
“Exactly,” Seth replied immediately.
Mercedes looked at them questioningly.
Jack took a moment before explaining. “Those documents were too easy to find.” Jack nodded in the direction of the death scene next door. “It’s a message. Like they’re a message.”
“And the point is well taken,” Seth added.
Jack waited impatiently for Mercedes to catch up.
When she had, Jack pulled her off the desk, and in a storm of fluttering paper, they ran from the office.
SIXTY-FIVE
MARADONA, COLOMBIA.
“The name I gave you is Angelica, but your father is an Irishman, so you became Kaitlin. I like that name very much also.”
Kaitlin held her mother’s arm as they walked slowly from the wide plateau overlooking the village. It had become a daily ritual that Kaitlin enjoyed because of the exercise, which they both needed, and the opportunity to explore this mysterious woman. It was on these sojourns that Eva usually became more talkative, likely the therapeutic benefit which was evident in the w
ay the sick woman straightened against Kaitlin’s body and drew her shoulders back to admire the hilltop view. Long and deeply Eva would inhale, savouring fresh air tinged with heady fragrances of the earth, the sky, and perhaps even more restoratively, Kaitlin’s companionship.
They’d tied her thick hair back using a gold and red ribbon which Kaitlin had found among an assortment of hair accessories and costume jewelry scattered on the bottom of a small drawer in a scuffed ancient dresser. The drawer was otherwise vacant, except for a dazzling silver box, its lid missing, which contained a set of gold earrings with blood-red rubies cut in the shape of teardrops. There was a beautiful gold locket. Kaitlin looked to Eva who simply nodded. Kaitlin carefully opened the locket and tilted it towards the light of the window. She brought it closer to her face. Into each side of the pendant was tucked a faded miniature portrait. A man, unsmiling with a broad nose, meaty lips and eyes staring out beneath thick brows and a well-oiled mane of black hair. The woman’s portrait showed the pretensions of billowing lace and languor on a countenance, once delicate, but since hardened by life and wifely duties.
Kaitlin guessed at their identities, then snapped shut the locket and set it down.
Another drawer was full of neatly folded garments of cotton and raw silk. Kaitlin tugged from the collection a pair of thin berry-coloured buttoned trousers and a white sleeveless shirt with pearl buttons and helped Eva dress. She then scrutinized a face of hollows, shadowed basins that sloped inward from the thin ridge of Eva’s delicate cheekbones. The skin underneath her dark eyes presented wanly discoloured crescents. Eva smiled at her own reflection, nearly breaking Kaitlin’s heart because she realized at that moment the sheer joy Eva felt as a result of this slight transformation.
On one of their daily walks Eva had led them as far as the graves and stood there quietly, for a long while deep in thought, disposed it seemed to anything but sweet recollection.
“Your parents?” Kaitlin finally said, to break the silence, but also to draw her back from whatever painful place she was revisiting. For some reason, Kaitlin was reluctant to allow the moment to wedge itself between them.
“My father and mother. Yes,” Eva replied, vacantly assessing her father’s grave. “My father was U’wa. His father was a tribal elder. The ones who remain live mostly in the northern provinces where they fight against big American oil companies. Centuries ago, rather than be dominated by the Spanish, the U’wa leapt to their deaths. They say they will do it again to protect the blood of mother earth.”
Somewhere a raven screeched. A winged shadow swept across the ground at their feet and vanished before the echo died. “It was the barbaric traditions I feared most,” said Eva. “You were not safe here, so I made a decision to get word to Argus as fast as I could.”
Not safe. Kaitlin stared at the grave of Eva’s dead father. The portrait inside the gold locket showed a man with thick broad features suggesting an indigenous lineage. Proud. Unconquered. Willing to jump from some sacred cliff rather than accept the ways of the conquerors’ descendants’ cash culture.
“I had no choice,” Eva continued. “After what my father did I had to protect you from the U’wa cruelty.”
Her father. Cruelty. Kaitlin felt compelled to ask for an explanation, when, despite her frailty, Eva dashed from the grave as if desperate to flee the reach of the dead man’s corpse. Kaitlin caught up with her a moment later near the orchard of Eva’s younger years. Slashed and burned to ruin now.
“Mangos,” Eva had said simply. “They made us fools for refusing our land to the coca when everyone was fat with it.” Eva carried a stick which she dug feebly into the dirt. “In the end it didn’t matter because we had no help for the harvest. Only Alejandro and I were left.”
Kaitlin could imagine the over-ripened mangos, weeping a syrupy sludge and thudding uselessly to the ground in the irregular rhythm of a dying heart.
“Pistoleros from the coca growers’ union came in the middle of the night and this is what they did.” Eva looked at Kaitlin with deep sadness. “It was a very difficult time for me. You understand.”
Her parents were both dead, under circumstances Eva had not yet revealed to her, though clearly it was a loss shrouded by something unspeakable. Ostracized by her people – alone, except for her strange uncle. Very difficult was an understatement. Kaitlin doubted anything she said would help at that moment. She nodded sympathetically.
Eva offered a smile in return. It quickly vanished as she gazed back towards the two crosses, beyond the scarred earth where they both now stood.
Kaitlin wanted to hear much more. Her face must have relayed that.
“Your father came for you as soon as he received my letter.”
“Argus.”
“Yes, Argus.”
Argus. Kaitlin struggled to remember. A face. A feeling. The echo of voices. Forms assembled as if beneath water’s rippled surface and then vanished to the depths below her consciousness.
They walked together into the cool narrow pathway stretching from the sunny plateau to the clearing in which stood Eva’s home. It was a lightless tunnel, veined by thick creeping vines and ribbed in century-old trees which bowed as though they were treading inside the torso of some benevolent breathing beast.
Eva took Kaitlin’s hand and squeezed. “I never told Argus he had two daughters. That there were two of you.”
Two of you. Kaitlin abruptly stopped. The starburst of that revelation made her tingle. Her stomach felt as if it were tumbling within its own weightless environment. Two daughters.
“Let’s have a cup of your wonderful tea,” Eva said before Kaitlin could say anything. “It’ll help your memory. I think you’re finally ready to hear everything.”
SIXTY-SIX
The two women emerged from the tunnel of trees and walked towards the house on the hilltop high above Maradona, and although they were not alone, they would never have known it.
Suarez thought the older one looked sick. She leaned on the younger woman as they shuffled slowly to the house, where they sat on the porch, smiling and talking. Suarez studied them through the scope of his high-powered rifle, playfully stroking the trigger as the crosshairs danced from one target to the other.
Mercedes Mendoza had come home. Of course she had. Where else would she have gone? Suarez smiled to himself and wondered if Mendoza had seen his handiwork at the orphanage. He hoped that she had. No matter. Even if she hadn’t it wouldn’t lessen the satisfaction he felt for a job well done. He’d taken his time with the priest and nuns but became impatient when they refused even to acknowledge Mendoza’s existence. How fucking stupid did they think he was? He’d watched while the two others had their fun, finally joining in when the screaming became too much for him to resist. Discovering the birth certificate had made it easy to find this place, a bonus after a hard night’s work with the old priest and his bitches.
The woman with Mendoza had to be her mother, the woman who had tossed her aside as a worthless child. Maybe this was some kind of reunion. A reconciliation. He congratulated himself for his good timing. The man was there as well. Suarez spotted him earlier in the shed and then he had disappeared inside the house. He would have a weapon, Suarez was certain, and assets he could summon from the village. They could simply storm the house, but it made more sense to destroy them from the safety of their sniping positions. It was his preferred tactic for other reasons as well. The combination of the drug and his ability to bestow life or death made him feel almost God-like.
Suarez pressed his eye against the scope again and realized at that moment that the older one might also have been involved in Mendoza’s thievery. The bonds were likely stashed inside the house, though he couldn’t say for certain because Mendoza’s confederate had refused to speak before he’d thrown her from the helicopter. She had begged him at first and then spat in his face in the second before he loosed her into the darkness. A search of their airplane turned up nothing useful, some jarred food and a briefcase whic
h suggested the woman was some kind of bank honcho.
In any event, Suarez had plans for the money that made his head buzz with anticipation. Or was it the pipe? He’d smoke again in a moment, but for now he was content to study the two soft targets as they loitered on the porch, smiling like old friends who were enjoying the approach of another perfect evening.
Two of Suarez’s men were staked out behind trees like this one, a hundred yards from the house, waiting for his signal. They wouldn’t have to wait much longer. Good thing too because the mosquitos were beginning to leave purple welts. His nerve endings hummed and lately he’d had a sensation that felt like bugs burrowing under his skin, making Suarez pick and scratch to the point of bleeding. He would break up the family reunion by putting a bullet into Mendoza’s mother first. He’d enjoy the look of shock on the younger one’s face as her mother crumpled to the ground, blood gushing from the centre of her forehead. Maybe a gut shot would produce a better show. Then he’d take Mendoza, after having his fun with her.
Everything was perfect. Suarez was enjoying the moment as he reached into his pocket for another rock which he placed in a small glass pipe, and in a smooth motion cupped a tiny white flame at its bowl and drew fiercely. The rock turned instantly to grey ash. Suarez coughed but wasn’t worried about giving away his position. He knew they were oblivious to him as he pulled the rifle scope to bleary eyes and applied light pressure to the trigger.
He’d be wealthy soon, he thought, exhaling thin smoke between smiling lips.
