The Spy Who Loved Him

by Merline Lovelace

  "He's invited us to take shelter with him and his wife," Carlos told her.

  "You'd best follow me quickly," the newcomer advised, "or night will catch us in the jungle and they will pull in the chair."

  Pull in the chair? Margarita looked to Carlos for an interpretation. He lifted his shoulders and fell in behind their guide.

  Abandoning the path Carlos had cut earlier, Alejandro squelched through the rain forest along some trail only he could discern. Before they'd traveled more than a few yards, a cloudburst swooped in, bringing an early dusk. After an initial pelting rain, a fine drizzle dogged them the rest of the way. Water dripped from Margarita's lashes and ran down her pants legs into her boots.

  Rain and the onrushing night blinded her when at last they stumbled out of the forest and stopped beside a narrow gorge. The sounds of a rushing river rose from the darkness below.

  "Diablo," their guide muttered. "They've taken in the chair."

  Margarita's curiosity got the better of her. "What chair?" she demanded, shoving back her wet hair.

  Alejandro jabbed a finger upward. "The one that carries us across the river."

  Squinting through the dark drizzle, she made out what looked like a stout, twisted rope outlined against the black sky. She followed its near end to a mahogany tree standing back from the edge of the gorge. The other end was lost in the murky darkness.

  "Conceptión!"

  The mooselike bellow had her jumping half out of her boots. Her ears were still ringing when a dog howled on the other side of the river. Another hound chimed in with the first. While the hounds set up a chorus of raucous calls, the listeners swatted mosquitoes and waited patiently. Finally, a woman shouted from the other side.

  "Alejandro? Is that you?"

  "Si. Send the chair."

  Something scraped against the base of the mahogany tree. A rope, Margarita saw. A guide rope, she guessed, as Alejandro began playing it out hand over hand. Some moments later, a bumpy rattle announced the arrival of the mysterious chair.

  At her first glimpse of the contraption, she widened her eyes. It wasn't much more than a small wooden crossbar dangling from some kind of a pulley. She was still trying to figure out how it worked when Alejandro graciously offered her first dibs.

  "You hook your legs over the crossbar. It is very simple."

  Too simple for Margarita's taste. Dubiously, she tested the wobbly support bar. "Are you sure this thing will hold me?"

  "But of course. It takes me back and forth daily."

  Since the rail-thin Alejandro probably weighed a good twenty pounds less than she did, that didn't particularly reassure her. Peering over the edge of the gorge, she eyed the river some fifty or so feet below. Oh, well. A spill into those dark waters couldn't get her any wetter than she already was.

  Carlos stood beside her. Worry roughened his voice when he asked her if she could swim.

  "Like a fish," she answered with only slight exaggeration. She preferred not to demonstrate her ability in the dark of night, however, weighted down with a vine backpack. In a river that might or might not be inhabited by bloodsucking leeches and other even less friendly life forms.

  "I would go first, but…." He gave the twisted hemp cable a strong tug. "But it's better that I guard our rear until I know you're safely across."

  "Right."

  With the mental equivalent of crossed fingers, Margarita passed him the Beretta and tried to swing a leg over the crossbar. The primitive trolley dangled too high above the ground for her to climb aboard. Firm hands closed around her waist.

  "Enjoy the ride, querida." Effortlessly, Carlos lifted her onto the precarious seat. "I'll join you on the other side."

  "I certainly hope so," she muttered, wrapping her arms around the upright.

  "Are you ready?" their guide inquired.

  "I'm rea—Mother of God!"

  Like a roller coaster with the brakes released, the crude wooden trolley shot straight down the sagging cable. Margarita squeezed her eyes shut, sure she was in for a dunking. The chair reached the bottom of the arc, climbed up a little, rolled back. Finally, it swayed to a halt with her boot heels dragging water.

  "Hang on," Alejandro called cheerfully from above. "Conceptión will pull you up."

  The guide rope creaked. The wooden pulley groaned. In fits and starts, Margarita was jerked upward to the other side of the gorge and greeted by Alejandro's wife. As short and round as her husband was tall and thin, she nodded politely as if strange females appeared in this remote corner of the jungle every night.

  "Buenas noches, Señora."

  "Buenas noches."

  Taking time for only sketchy introductions, Margarita helped Conceptión ferry the men across the gorge. Once they had all gained the same side, Conceptión picked up her skirts and led the way up a cleared slope. A pack of dogs escorted the small group, barking furiously. Goats baaed and skittered away, their neck bells clinking. What looked like either a very skinny cow or an oversize jungle cat stared at them from the shadows.

  Even on cleared land, the ground was so soggy Margarita sank to her ankles with every step. She caught the sound of small streams trickling down the slope toward the gorge and wasn't surprised to find that the people of the village had built their houses on stilts.

  The half dozen or so dilapidated structures squatted like drunken storks atop their pilings. Despite the darkness, Margarita could see that the wooden walls sagged with rot and the cloth-covered windows tilted at odd angles. Uneven steps constructed of rough-hewn boards led to doors covered only with oiled cloth. Drizzle ran down corrugated tin roofs to splat on the soggy ground below.

  But the people who poked out their heads to see what the commotion was about didn't appear concerned that their homes looked ready to fall down around their heads at any moment. At the sight of strangers in their midst, the village's entire population poured out of their houses. Children, dogs, chickens and a pink and white speckled shoat accompanied the handful of adults who gathered around the newcomers.

  Alejandro fielded questions while Conceptión escorted her guests up a set of steps and ushered them inside with the gracious hospitality of the Madrileñan people.

  "Our house is your house."

  Ducking her head, Margarita entered the one-room residence, lit only by flickering candles. Carlos followed, as did the rest of the villagers, dogs and chickens included. Even the piglet joined the gathering.

  "Sit, sit," Alejandro invited with a wave of his hand. "First, you eat. Then you will tell us the news."

  Praying that the sagging floor didn't give out beneath the crowd's collective weight, Margarita joined Carlos on a bench drawn up to the rough-hewn table. The others crowded around as Conceptión dished up bowls of rice and black beans, stacks of cold tortillas and tin mugs brimming with hot, sweet coffee.

  The villagers waited politely until the strangers had wolfed down their food before resuming their eager questions. With no electricity to power radios, they obviously depended on the occasional visitor for news of the world.

  The very occasional visitor.

  As Carlos quickly determined, none of the inhabitants of this isolated corner of the rain forest had spoken to another outsider for upwards of a month or more.

  "But I did see smoke from a cook fire earlier today," Alejandro commented. "Not far from where I ran into you. Someone follows you, I think."

  "Someone does," Carlos admitted, his eyes grave. "But we don't know if that someone is my lieutenant and the rest of my squad, or a dangerous fugitive and his men."

  "They are bad men, the ones with this fugitive?"

  "Drug runners. From across the border."

  Alejandro spit a brownish stream through the gap left by his missing front teeth. The spittle hit the piglet on the snout and sent it squealing.

  "They are bastards," he muttered. "Scum who come in and cut into our meager profits."

  The others murmured their agreement. Neither Carlos nor Margarita saw fit
to comment on the fact that their host obviously dabbled in the illicit drug trade himself. So many of Madrileño's desperately poor farmers did, viewing it as a means to feed their hungry children. They didn't consider it their problem if rich, idle norte americanos chose to stuff the by-product of the coca plant up their noses.

  For just that reason, Carlos had concentrated his crackdown efforts on the middle- and upper-echelon traffickers, those running major processing facilities hidden deep in the jungle and far-flung distribution networks. He wasn't after the little fish so much as the sharks and barracudas who fed on human weakness and misery.

  "Tomás and I will go back across the river tomorrow to see who comes after you," Alejandro announced, hooking his arm around the shoulders of a skinny, grinning boy of seven or eight. "He's like a monkey, my grandson. He climbs the highest trees and no one sees him."

  "Will you also send your fastest runner to a village that has a radio?" Carlos asked. "If it's the criminal who follows, I want to call in reinforcements. These men are well armed," he added when his host puffed up his chest and appeared ready to argue his family's ability to take down a few Colombians single-handedly. "With machine guns and perhaps shoulder-held mortars."

  A low murmur greeted that news. The men looked belligerent, the women worried. They'd had trouble here before, Margarita guessed. Bad trouble, judging by Conceptión's brisk manner as she pushed back her bench and shooed everyone away from the table.

  "Our guests are wet and tired. You, Eliado, bring Carlos one of your shirts and dry pants. He would burst the seams of Alejandro's."

  A hulking young man hurried to do her bidding.

  "And as for you, Señorita…" Tapping a pudgy finger against her cheek, she eyed Margarita from the top of her dripping head to her muddy boots. "For you, I think, my wedding dress."

  "I thank you," Margarita said from her heart, humbled that the woman would offer her most treasured possession. "But, truly, it would be too fine for me."

  And too short. She topped the rotund Conceptión by a good six inches.

  "No, no, you shall have it. I was saving it for my granddaughter, but that one…" Her mouth pursed in disgust.

  "Annuncia ran off with a gringo who came through last year," Alejandro announced. "A clumsy man who fell all over his feet, dropped his spectacles in the mud and collected ants in glass bottles."

  "Ants!" Shaking her head over such foolishness, Conceptión moved across the slanting floor to a row of woven baskets and dug through several in search of her wedding dress. The pungent scent of cedar bark drifting across the room assured Margarita that the baskets' contents hadn't succumbed to wet and mildew.

  A smile played at Conceptión's mouth when she returned with a white cotton blouse yellowed by age and a full, flounced skirt embroidered in an exquisite rainbow of colors. Fondly, she fingered the skirt's intricate pattern of vines, flowers and parrots.

  "I began sewing this the very day I decided to let Alejandro court me. I knew long before he did that I would marry him." Her gaze lingered on Carlos for a moment before she caught Margarita's eye. "How long will you let this one court you before you marry him?"

  Carlos hooked an eyebrow, obviously as interested in her answer to that loaded question as their hostess. For the life of her, Margarita couldn't come up with one. She floundered for a moment or two before Conceptión took pity on her.

  "Ah, well, the marriage ceremony really matters little. After I bedded with Alejandro, three years passed before a priest could come to the village to bless our union. He baptized our son and first daughter at the same time." Her plump shoulders lifted in a shrug. "Once a woman takes her man to her bed, the rest follows as it will."

  The recipient of that sage bit of philosophy flatly refused to look at Carlos.

  "I found a nightdress for you," the older woman said, passing Margarita the pile of soft, cottony garments. "And some dry underwear. There is bark to scrub your teeth beside the bed, and soap if you wish it. Leave that jug on the table, Alejandro."

  Her husband's face fell. "But, Ceptión, this is one of my finest batches."

  "Our guests can sample it on their own if they wish. Come, it is late. We will go to our son's house so Carlos and Margarita may rest after their journey."

  Abandoning the clay jug with a look of profound regret, the farmer followed his bustling wife through the oilcloth door covering. The dogs scurried after him, although the clutch of chickens and the piglet declined to go out into the drizzle.

  A small silence descended, broken only by the patter of rain on the tin roof and the piglet's snuffling explorations under the table. Margarita clutched the cedar-scented garments to her chest and stared at the man watching her across the candles flickering on the table.

  She could only imagine what she must look like after her dive into the moss and nose-to-nose encounter with the orange frog. Her hair straggled down her back. Carlos's fatigue shirt hung in heavy folds to her thighs. Mud oozed over her boot tops onto the floor.

  He didn't present any more civilized appearance. His hair stood in wet spikes where he'd thrust a hand through it. Dark bristles shadowed his cheeks and chin. The black T-shirt was torn at one shoulder, stretched taut over the other shoulder. Beneath the short sleeves, his muscles gleamed wet and sleek in the candlelight.

  Margarita's stomach clenched. Was it only a few hours ago she'd all but ripped that ragged T-shirt off his back? Only hours since she'd lost herself in those powerful arms?

  Once a woman takes a man to her bed, the rest follows as it will.

  Conceptión's words thundered in her head. As did Carlos's fierce promise.

  The next time we make love, it will be in a bed.

  We'll take it slow. So slow and sweet, you'll want to die of it.

  Heat flooded her veins. Heat and something close to panic. She'd imagined she'd have days to sort through what happened this afternoon in the jungle, not mere hours. Time to find some middle ground between the aching, elemental needs Carlos stirred in her and her determination to remain her own person.

  At this moment, with his eyes so intent on her, she could hardly remember her name, much less the person she thought she was. Dammit, she hated this confusion. Hated the flash of heat in her veins that got in the way of her thinking.

  "You're wet to the bone," he said slowly, breaking into her chaotic thoughts. "You'd better change."

  The borrowed clothes still tight against her chest, she looked around the single room. The closest thing to privacy was the shadowy niche beyond the mosquito-net-draped bed. She retreated behind the net and quickly stripped off. Despite the muggy heat, goose bumps prickled her skin as she removed her boots and socks, then peeled off her sodden jeans and shirt. She swore she could feel Carlos's eyes on her as she twisted her arms behind her back to unhook the red bra.

  She heard a muttered curse, then the chink of clay against tin. Apparently Carlos had decided to indulge in some of Alejandro's home brew.

  Swiftly, she tossed the bra aside, scrubbed the mud from her body with a rough cloth dunked in a bucket of water and pulled on Conceptión's nightdress. The cotton settled over her in cloud-soft folds and covered her from neck to mid calf. She wiggled out of her wet panties and stepped into the drawers her hostess had given her. They were the old-fashioned kind, high at the waist with legs that reached halfway down her thighs, but so comfortable Margarita sighed in pure, unadulterated bliss.

  She was reaching for the scrap of fragrant bark to scrub her teeth when a thud of footsteps outside the door led to an exchange of male voices, followed by the sounds of Carlos, too, shedding his wet clothes. The broad-shouldered Eliado must have raided his possessions as ordered.

  By the time she finished dragging a wooden comb through her hair, her entire body sang with the joy of being clean and dry. Wringing out her wet garments, she looked around for a place to hang them. Carlos, she saw, already had draped his fatigue pants and T-shirt on pegs pounded into the wall. Emerging from the shadowy nic
he, she arranged her clothes beside his.

  That homey task done, she turned to find him comfortably settled on the bench drawn up to the table, a tin mug in his hand. The yeasty scent of fermented bananas drifted across the room.

  This was another Carlos, she thought in quiet amazement. Another edition of the man she'd never seen before. The simple white cotton shirt of a farmer draped his broad shoulders. He'd exchanged his fatigue pants for well-washed cotton trousers and shed his boots. Madrileño's Deputy Minister of Defense appeared as much at home in these rough surroundings as he had at the Presidential Palace.

  Evidently she, too, had metamorphosed. A smile played at the corners of his mouth as he skimmed a glance from her still-wet head to her bare toes.

  "You look very different in that nightgown, querida. Like a little girl, with your face scrubbed clean and your hair hanging down your back."

  At least until she moved into the light cast by the candles. Carlos caught the outline of her slender body beneath the gown and almost crushed the tin mug in his fist.

  Holy Mother! And he'd thought those damned scraps of red silk and lace would drive him mad! They didn't begin to compare with the erotic play of thin cotton over dusky nipples. Or the shadowy suggestion of what looked like long drawers beneath the gown.

  They were the sort his grandmother used to wear, for God's sake! Yet the idea of lifting that gown and sliding those old-fashioned knickers down Margarita's lean flanks sent a jolt of heat straight to his belly.

  In the few seconds it took to toss down the rest of Alejandro's fiery brew, Carlos waged a fierce war with his rational self…and lost.

  The mug hit the table. Shoving the bench back, he pushed to his feet. "Conceptión was right. It's late. Are you ready for bed?"

  Her eyes widened. She flicked a glance beyond him to the net draped over the wooden platform in the corner. Her gaze swung back to Carlos. For long moments, she stared at him.

  He sensed she was fighting her own internal battle, and knew the instant she surrendered. He saw it in the lift of her breasts beneath the thin cotton. Heard it in the long, slow sigh she breathed out.