How could I leave my daughter’s fate in your hands?
I turned my back to Grey, stepped over to the window, slightly parted the curtains, and gazed at the dim horizon.
“Grey, you’ve said all you need to say. I’d appreciate it if you just left now, so I can try to get some sleep.”
“Simon—”
“Please, Grey.” I held up a hand, lowered it when I noticed it trembling. “Please, Grey. For Christ’s sake, just leave.”
Chapter 39
There are plenty of advantages to not flying commercial. But by far the best thing about the private flight from Costa Rica to Bogotá was that, thanks to Edgar’s people, I was able to bring the Glocks I’d recovered from the Ticos.
I’d showered and dressed in a black outfit that skirted the edge between dressy and casual. In the room, I double- and triple-checked the magazines I’d purchased from a teenage boy on the street near the hotel. I’d also picked up a Glock 27. The .40-caliber subcompact was small and light, yet accurate and powerful—the perfect backup weapon.
I placed all three weapons and the extra magazines into my duffel, along with a small case that contained a listening device Grey had left at the front desk for me. I zippered everything up, and just as I was about to leave my hotel room, I heard a knock at my door.
Cautiously, I checked the peephole.
“Mariana,” I said as I opened the door.
She looked past me at the duffel sitting on the bed. “You are leaving?” she said.
“Just for the night. I’ll likely be back in the morning.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, moving past me into the room.
I closed the door. There was no use lying, I decided. What was I going to tell her? That I was going sightseeing? That I felt like taking in a movie this evening?
“I’m heading to Cali.”
She frowned even though she seemed to know what was coming. “To find the girl, Olivia? But you cannot go to Cali alone.”
“This is what I was hired to do, Mariana. This is my job.”
She grabbed my forearm, dragged me in front of the mirror atop the dresser. “Look at you,” she said in her smoldering accent. “You are Caucasian. Worse, you are an American. I have not heard you speak one complete sentence of Spanish. You look, you sound, you walk like a U.S. federal agent. You will not receive a single word of information in Cali unless that word is written on the bullet they put into your skull.”
She smacked me in the back of the head as though to demonstrate where the bullet would enter. Those frail arms were a hell of a lot stronger than they looked.
“I can manage,” I told her.
“Do not be so stupid. I will go with you. The men who have this Olivia, they paid or bartered for her because they cannot find volunteers. But I can act as a volunteer, and they will be happy to have me. I can get inside and find the girl so that you can take her home to her family.”
“It’s too dangerous,” I said.
She gripped me by the shoulders this time, looked deep into my eyes. “You saved my life, Simon. I can pay you back in different ways, but I think you most like this one. You want most to save this girl from these killers, and I can help you to do that.”
Amped though I was on caffeine, I felt her warm breath on my chin and it worked to relax me. The tension flowed out from my shoulders, down along my biceps and triceps, into my forearms, and finally seemed to fall from my fingers as she held me.
I placed my hands on her hips. I’d meant to gently push her off, but instead I pulled her closer. There was such a ferocious courage in her eyes, it was all I could do not to touch her lips with mine.
Too frequently, naiveté was mistaken for goodness. But the damaged, I’d found, were often the most righteous. When I first met Tasha in college, what I’d most loved about her was her innocence. But the world wasn’t innocent; it was full of pain. Tasha and I had learned that together the hard way. And she didn’t survive it.
To become fully human, you had to know you were dispensable—and accept it, not want it any other way. Then, if you were still willing to sacrifice for the sake of others, you’d be more alive than most men and women on the planet. Because it wasn’t your ability to avoid the fire that made you special; it was your willingness to walk through it; it was how resilient you were when you came out the other side.
As I held Mariana, I thought again of Ana, of being alone with her in our hotel room in Ukraine. Days before, in Poland, she had unquestionably withstood the flames, sacrificed more for a child she’d never met than most people would for their own blood. There in Odessa, she too balked at the idea of remaining behind; she’d insisted on helping me infiltrate a violent organization despite the further risk to her own life.
That night Ana and I went to a nightclub, where Ana allowed herself to be picked up by a dangerous man. For a time, I lost track of her whereabouts. And I’d felt utterly shattered for giving in and accepting her help. I couldn’t allow that to happen again, not to Mariana.
“I can’t put you in danger, Mariana.”
“Then don’t. Just don’t stray too far, and I will always be safe.”
I thought about it. Truth was, I would never have had a chance at finding Lindsay Sorkin in time without Ana’s help. She’d handled herself as well as anyone I’d ever worked with, and she was only a lawyer. Mariana had already lived through hell. She knew this world, and I needed her.
I could do it; I could protect her.
I’d stay on her, make sure I could see her or hear her at all times.
“All right,” I said, tearing myself away from her while beating back a desire I hadn’t felt in a long time. “Let’s go find our girl.”
* * *
I rented a black Toyota Hilux pickup truck, which was essentially a 4Runner given a different name to attract South American consumers. The drive from Bogotá to Cali would take roughly eight hours. Of course, with the clock constantly ticking and a young girl’s life on the line, I would have preferred to take a plane—but then the Glocks couldn’t have come along.
Two hours into the drive, I pulled over near a roadside fruit stand and purchased some fresh mangoes, guavas, and a few varieties of bananas. We pulled back onto the road and ate on the way.
During the drive, Mariana asked me about my childhood, as I had asked about hers at the café. Although I rarely shared that with anyone, I figured it was only fair I open up to her just as she’d opened up to me.
“I was born in London,” I told her. “My father, Alden, was a doctor; my mother, I’m not sure. When I was five years old, my father took me to the United States for reasons that were never made clear. All I really know is that we left my mother and my slightly older sister, Tuesday, behind. I never saw either of them again.”
“You were stolen by your father,” she said.
I felt her eyes on me. “I can’t say anything for sure. I just don’t know.”
“You never asked your father?”
“Oh, I asked him. Especially as a child. In the early years, after we arrived in Rhode Island, my father became a master at changing the subject. Whenever I asked about my mother and sister, we just happened to be near an ice cream shop or a toy store. If I asked him at bedtime, he’d suggest I get up and have some late-night cookies with him while we watched one of my favorite movies on the VCR.”
“And as you grew older?”
“He turned to emotional blackmail, made me feel as though asking about my mother and sister hurt him in some deep, irreparable way. He’d say, ‘Why, son? Am I not enough? Have I failed you in some way?’ How does a seven-year-old answer questions like those? ‘Of course you’re enough,’ I’d tell him. ‘You haven’t failed me in any way.’ ‘Then, let it be,’ he’d say.”
“And you would let it be?”
“Not always. As I got a little older, I caught on to the emotional manipulation. I persisted. As soon as I did, he became defiant. He reacted with this extraordinary rage—w
hich I suspected was really guilt, but I could never be sure. ‘What the hell business is it of yours?’ he’d say. ‘I raised you, I sacrificed for you, I paid for your education.’ He’d escalate it into such an argument that he could justify giving me the silent treatment or walking away.”
“And?”
“And it just further eroded my relationship with my father. Eventually, I went away to college and saw less and less of him. Then I met Tasha and rarely saw him at all, only talked once in a while over the phone about nothing. Finally, Tasha and I became engaged and I waited six months to tell him. Then when the time came to send out wedding invitations, instead of stuffing his into an envelope, I decided to take a match to it. I watched it burn away and knew that was the end of our relationship. Tasha and I wanted to start a family. I knew I’d never allow my father near our kids, so what sense did it make stringing him along.”
“And you never went looking for your mother and sister?”
“Not until last year.”
“And?” Some hope had found its way into her voice. “You found them?”
“Just my mother. She’d been buried at Streatham Cemetery nearly a decade ago. The headstone was small and simple, engraved with her maiden name, Tatum Fuller, and her dates of birth and death. Below her name, in small letters, it read ‘Beloved Mother.’”
“I am sorry,” Mariana said. “And what of your sister?”
“After finding Mum like that, I didn’t think I could handle a reunion with my sister. At least not right away. So, from London I went on to Berlin to see an old friend. I intended to return to London to search for my sister, Tuesday, just afterwards. But then from Berlin, I drove west to Warsaw to see a woman I’d fallen in love with.”
Mariana smiled. “A woman?”
“Anastazja Staszak.”
For a moment I became lost in my own thoughts. I suddenly remembered how badly Ana had wanted to see Hollywood. I’d assured her I’d take her there at some point. I’d been in L.A. at the Trentons’ estate just a few days ago and never once even gave it a thought.
I said to Mariana, “I left things badly with Ana. She wanted me to remain in Warsaw, where she practiced law. She’d recently been hired as a prosecutor. I explained that I couldn’t stay in Warsaw, that my work was in the United States. We ultimately reached an impasse, and although it was left unspoken, I think we both decided after I left that it would be too painful to ever see each other again.”
The corners of her lips fell into a frown. “How sad that is.”
I felt Mariana’s eyes on me again as I drove. I said, “I made a few more stops in Eastern Europe—paid a visit to some troubled kids in Kiev, then to a number of struggling clinics caring for very sick children in Minsk—and by the time I was finished, I was emotionally drained. I couldn’t bear going back to London to search for Tuesday.”
“So you didn’t.”
“So I didn’t. And for some reason I can’t quite get my mind around, I still haven’t.”
As I watched the road disappear underneath our vehicle, I pictured Tuesday as a child. I remembered looking at my daughter on her fifth birthday and seeing Tuesday’s face. Hailey hadn’t been the spitting image of my sister, of course. But there were certainly similarities. Part of me wondered if that was why I was so reluctant to seek out Tuesday as an adult. Was I afraid to see the woman that Hailey would never have the chance to become?
“So your parents,” Mariana said minutes later, “they are why you search for the missing?”
“No.” I said it so softly that my voice was drowned out by the pickup’s engine. “I do this because of my wife and daughter.”
I went on to tell her the terrible story of Hailey’s abduction eleven years ago. Of the long and fruitless investigation. Of Tasha’s nervous breakdown and subsequent suicide.
I felt her eyes on me once more; this time she was looking at me through tears. “I am so sorry, Simon.”
For the remainder of the drive, we stayed silent.
Chapter 40
When we reached Cali, it was dark and there were decisions to be made. Afraid that time might be running out on Olivia, we were both eager to begin as soon as possible. But I worried that for Mariana, the night would be more dangerous than the day.
“The people I must talk to,” she said, “they will be harder to find once the sun rises. I should seek them out now, in the bars and nightclubs.”
We parked on Avenida Sexta, better known as Av Sexta, which Mariana assured me was the nucleus of seedy nightlife in Cali.
Av Sexta. Sounded about right.
She entered a few bars on her own, looking for people she recognized, but each time she came up empty.
She wore a tight black dress that made her look even more striking than usual, so striking that it was difficult to concentrate on her words when she finally reentered the vehicle.
“We should leave the car parked here and take a taxi to the clubs,” she said. “It is not like the old days. The men with money to afford mules, they will not be hanging out at these shitty bars.”
“All right. Which club?”
She brightened. “That depends. Shall we start at the most famous, the most expensive, or the one that attracts the best dancers?”
“Let’s start at famous and work our way down from there,” I suggested.
After I wired her for sound, we took a twenty-minute taxi ride to the Changó nightclub on Via Cavasa in Juanchito. The listening device Grey left us consisted of two simple earbuds—one for her ear, the other for mine. The buds were tiny and invisible to the naked eye; the audio was crisp and clear.
We had the taxi drop us at a corner a couple blocks away from our destination.
“We’ll need a code word,” I said before she walked toward the club, “in case there’s any trouble. Keep in mind, my Spanish is a little rusty.”
Mariana gazed skyward in thought. “In a sentence I will say the name Gabriel García Márquez.”
The world-famous Colombian novelist was the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. In the early ’80s, Gabriel García Márquez—or Gabo, as he’s affectionately known throughout Latin America—was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
“Perfect,” I said.
Mariana continued to find new ways to impress me; under any other circumstances, I would have asked her to save the last dance for me.
We could hear the music from more than a block away. Undeniably salsa.
Mariana must have noticed me grinning as we walked toward the club. “You know Cali-style salsa?” she asked. “No? Cali is known as ‘El Capital de la Salsa’—the salsa capital of the world. Perhaps, when all this is over, I can teach to you this dance.”
“I’d like that,” I said, stopping her at the corner across from the club. “Be careful in there. Say the word, and I’ll be inside within sixty seconds.”
Mariana turned and started toward the entrance, which was blocked off by red velvet rope. She sidestepped the long line outside, went straight up to one of the two large bouncers, said something in his ear, and was immediately allowed inside.
I removed my BlackBerry and dialed what was by now a familiar number.
“The subscriber you have called is not able to receive calls at this time.”
I considered calling Edgar but then thought better of it. If there were any news on his end, I would have heard about it by now—if not from him, then from Don Lemon or Anderson Cooper on television back at the hotel.
I turned to the street, which was quiet with the exception of the pounding bass from the club. Parked on the opposite side of the road, about a block up, stood a dark SUV, which looked similar to an SUV I’d seen several times on the road to Cali but had thought nothing of.
Now its presence disturbed me.
I placed the BlackBerry against my ear and pretended to make a call as I crept up the street toward the vehicle. The SUV appeared to be an older-model Chevy, maybe a Trooper. I
wouldn’t know until I got a good look at the rear, and the vehicle was currently facing forward. There appeared to be someone at the wheel, though I couldn’t make out a face in the darkness.
As I neared the vehicle, its headlights suddenly flashed on, momentarily blinding me. I threw my arm up in front of my face. The SUV backed out of its space, but instead of moving forward, it continued in reverse until it entered the previous intersection. Then the vehicle swiftly performed a partial K-turn and sped down the avenue and out of sight.
I cursed under my breath. I hadn’t been able to catch the plates.
Meanwhile, in my left ear, Mariana chatted away in Spanish. The salsa music caused my eardrum to pulse, but I felt that if I spoke decent Spanish, I could have made out every word she was saying. This was state-of-the-art U.S. equipment we were using. And for that, I had to be grateful. Grey didn’t need to leave me anything after the way I’d tossed him out of my hotel room.
In my ear I heard Mariana repeating the word “permiso,” and I assumed she was trying to weave her way through the crowd.
A few long minutes later, Mariana’s voice came clearly over the wire. She’d started a conversation with someone. A male with a deep baritone.
“Perdón,” she said. “¿De dónde eres?”
“Soy de Medellín. Cómo te llamas?”
“Me llamo Mariana.”
“Mucho gusto, Mariana.”
“El gusto es mío.”
I vaguely understood the introductions but was completely lost after that initial exchange.
She’s from here, I told myself again and again. This is her world. She knows what she’s doing.
I paced outside the nightclub, using my phone as a prop, thinking all the while about Ana and how I’d thought I lost her for good in Ukraine. I thought I’d put it firmly behind me, but my conversation with Mariana brought it all back.
The longer Mariana was gone, the more anxious I became.
Whenever there was silence on the wire, I’d consider storming inside.
Then I’d hear Mariana’s voice and it would soothe me.
Payoff Page 15
