“Is something wrong?” Mariana said.
“Nothing,” I told her. “I’m fine.”
There was only one old woman sitting in the pews. She sat on the right side, near the aisle, about halfway between us and the altar. She was mumbling to herself, fondling a set of dark red rosary beads.
Just beyond the altar hung a giant gold Christ.
As we moved toward the altar, a man of maybe seventy stepped out from behind the marble back wall. He was light-skinned, dressed in a long, flowing red robe, and wore a crimson skullcap atop a headful of thick white hair.
His dark eyes fell on us immediately, though he didn’t say anything at first, just watched as we approached the altar.
“Permiso,” I said to him. “¿Hablas inglés?”
He bowed his head. “Sí.”
I held out my hand. “My name is Simon Fisk. This is my friend Mariana Silva.”
Tentatively, he took my hand and smiled at Mariana, exposing a set of sparkling white dentures.
“Me llamo Cardinal César Zumbado,” he said. “Archbishop of Caracas. How can I be of service, Señor Fisk?”
My eyes were drawn to his white collar. I’d been educated in Catholic schools in the States, from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. Despite my fervent protests, my father had always insisted on a private and religious education.
“I need a … favor,” I told him.
“What kind of favor?” he said.
“I have an issue with someone high up in the Venezuelan government, and I need an audience with him—today.”
I was ready for the archbishop to dismiss me there and then, but it was apparent that his curiosity had gotten the best of him.
“Who?” he said with a slight tilt of his head.
“The Minister of Foreign Affairs.”
“Vicente Delgado?” A sharp look of surprise crossed his face. “What is your business with him?”
I nearly asked for his word that he keep our discussion confidential. But I was sure he’d be offended. Besides, what was the use of his word without a threat of reprisal? In my experience, a holy man’s word was only as good as anyone else’s.
“You’ve seen the news about the teenage girl abducted from her home in California?” I said.
“I read something about it in this morning’s El Universal.”
“I just arrived here from Colombia,” I told him, “where I had an intense conversation with Óscar Luis Toro de Villa.”
His razor-thin white brows rode up his forehead. “The drug lord?”
“The same.”
Zumbado spoke in a monotone; it was almost as though he were reciting something he intoned every day at Mass. “And what, may I ask, was this discussion about?”
“The girl,” I said. “Don Óscar was told to take her and hand her over to individuals near Colombia’s border with Venezuela.”
Zumbado half smiled, but it came off as more of a smirk. “Or so this criminal told you.”
“I have little reason to doubt his veracity, Your Eminence.”
“And why is that?”
“Because my associate was holding a gun to the head of Don Óscar’s younger brother when Don Óscar confessed.”
Zumbado breathed in and out audibly as he considered what I’d just said. “You are suggesting Venezuela’s Minister of Foreign Affairs ordered the kidnapping of an American teenager?”
“I’m doing more than suggesting it, Your Eminence. I’m telling you precisely what happened.”
“And why would Vicente Delgado do that?”
“According to Delgado, he was instructed to.”
“By whom?”
“By the president of Venezuela.”
A flicker of light shone in Zumbado’s eyes for the first time. “I see.” He glanced over my shoulder, presumably to make certain no one else had entered the cathedral. “And this Don Óscar simply acquiesced?”
“Don Óscar was threatened.”
“Was he?” A great deal of skepticism remained in the archbishop’s voice, which I found excruciatingly ironic. “Threatened with violence?”
“Worse,” I told him. “Threatened with the shutting down of his smuggling route through Venezuela.”
He paused. “And what makes you think I can help you?”
“The rift between you and the regime is well documented, Your Eminence.”
“Of course. I have spoken out against the anti-Catholic rhetoric of our current president. He levels attacks at me and my Church, and I fire right back. It is part of my role as the archbishop.”
“With due respect, Your Eminence, you’ve done more than simply fire back. You’ve called the president’s actions unconstitutional and illegal. You’ve accused him of being a liar and a criminal.”
“Because that is what he is, Señor Fisk. He is a tyrant. However, I have also led my flock in praying for the president during his recent health crisis. This, despite the fact that he travels to Havana for treatment and treats the Castros as though they are royalty. Meanwhile, he calls me a Neanderthal.” He shrugged. “But I could not care less. It is his attacks on the Holy See that he will have to atone for if his present affliction finally takes him.”
“He’s attacked the pope?” I said. “Didn’t the pope visit with the president recently?”
“Not recently. Years ago, and only because I asked him to, in order to get the president’s assurances that Venezuela will keep in place our strong laws against the murder of the unborn.”
Mariana sniffled. I turned to her and thought her eyes had become moist.
“You have enough insight to help me, Your Eminence. Tell me where I can find the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or at least point me in the direction of someone who can.”
“You presume that the president’s ministers side with him rather than the Church with respect to our disagreements. It’s a dangerous presumption. You have seen how the president treats the members of his cabinet?”
“Then you’d be in an even better position to assist me.”
Zumbado shook his head slowly from side to side as he considered his response. “Unfortunately, Señor Fisk, I am not. I do sympathize with your plight. However, my best and only advice is to wait until the end of Carnaval. On Wednesday morning, after Mardi Gras, Caracas will begin returning to normal. You will undoubtedly have better luck locating Vicente Delgado then.”
“Your Eminence—”
“I am sorry,” he said with a raised palm. “But you will have to excuse me. I must return to work. I have to make preparations for an important wedding ceremony that’s taking place in my church tomorrow afternoon. I wish you good luck. The girl will remain in our prayers.”
Chapter 54
As we stepped out of the cathedral, back into the jam-packed streets, I turned to Mariana and said, “You seemed to get a little misty-eyed back there when we were speaking to the archbishop.”
“It was nothing.”
Clearly, it wasn’t nothing. A wall of water was forming in front of her eyes even now as we stood in the falling sunlight. I couldn’t decide whether to pursue it or let it go. As someone who’d lost his wife and daughter, I knew that pain could sneak up on you, that sometimes you didn’t want your best friend to raise the subject of that pain yet other times you’d happily fall into the arms of a complete stranger. Not only are we all different when it comes to grief, we desire different actions and reactions at different times.
She said, “You are hungry, yes? Shall we get something to eat?”
“Sure.”
A few blocks later we found ourselves in front of Restaurant Beirut. From the outside, the place didn’t look like much, and it certainly didn’t seem appealing. At least not to me. Mariana, however, said she loved Lebanese cuisine, so I told her, “Let’s give it a shot.”
We were seated in the far corner of the small eatery, my attention half-commanded by the menu I couldn’t read, and half-distracted by the small television I couldn’t hear and wouldn�
�t be able to understand if I did.
I asked Mariana if she would choose something for me.
She asked, “What do you like?”
“Pizza.”
I’d been joking, but after the waitress came by and took our order, I asked Mariana what she had ordered for me.
“Pizza, like you say.”
“Really.”
“In Lebanon, it is called manakish. It is like a pizza: dough and toppings. Yours will be topped with za’atar, mixed with olive oil. It is delicious; I am sure you will love it.”
I watched the door as a party of four entered, two drunk middle-aged men with two drunker middle-aged women attached to their sides.
“You did not like the archbishop,” Mariana said.
I gazed at her across the table. “Not particularly, no.”
“I noticed this.”
I tried to smile. “You’re very perceptive.”
She nodded. “As are you.”
I was relieved she’d created an opening. “You’re going to tell me what upset you back there?”
Mariana ran her hands through her shimmering black hair. At their thickest, her arms were so slight that I could hold both of them in a single hand. As alert and energetic as she was, I had to keep reminding myself that for the past sixteen months, she’d been held captive under unthinkable circumstances.
“Last year,” she said quietly, “one of our keepers drove me into San José to work for the weekend. Usually, it was always two of them who accompanied each girl, but this was also the time of Carnaval, so they wanted to bring as many girls as possible into the capital. As soon as we arrived in San José, he brought me to this terrible apartment. It was in shambles, no furniture but for a filth-covered mattress. I asked him, ‘What are we doing here? We should be outside; that is where the business is.’ He said nothing, this big man. Just struck me with a closed fist, then threw me onto the mattress and dropped his tremendous body on top of me. He…”
She trailed off.
“You don’t have to tell me any more,” I said, reaching across the table and taking her hand.
“No,” she sobbed. “I finish these things I start.” She breathed in, and again it struck me how resilient this woman was. “Over forty-eight hours, he repeatedly raped me.”
“Mariana—”
“It is okay.” She continued, “Always, when they forced me to work, I insisted that the johns wear protection. But this man, he did not. I begged over and over again, but he refused. A few weeks later I realized I missed my period and I asked that I be allowed to take a pregnancy test. The men, all of them, said no. But one of the men, he was younger and kinder than the others. A few days later, he brought me a test when I was alone.”
I bit down on my lower lip, a mixture of sadness and rage swelling in my chest.
“I was pregnant, yes. But I could not have this baby, this product of a rape.” She touched her fingers to the small gold crucifix hanging around her throat. “But I am Catholic, and the Church says that you cannot end a pregnancy, no matter what. Even with a rape, they say it is a gift from God.”
I felt my eyes welling up.
“The young man, the one that was kinder than the others, he brought me pills. They were regular contraceptive pills, but he told me if I swallowed enough of them…”
Gently, I pulled her chair closer to mine and held her to me. “It’s okay, Mariana.”
She pulled away, her head down, hair falling over her wet face. “But it is not okay, Simon. I took the life. Every night I have to think about it before I go to sleep. I have to beg of God forgiveness for this. I have to pray.…”
I knew that nothing I said would change the way she felt, nothing I said would alter what she believed. All I could do was listen and offer my sympathies. Anything else and I risked igniting her rage.
Before she could say another word, the waitress arrived with our plates of food. Mariana wiped her eyes as mine fell on the small television screen again. The local news was covering the Carnaval festivities in the coastal city of Puerto La Cruz. I squinted so that I could see better, make out whom they were focusing the camera on: a hulk of a man in a bright red polo shirt driving a golf cart in the middle of the mobbed parade.
I’d known he wasn’t camera-shy. In fact, the president had been a master of the media for over two decades, ever since he’d led an unsuccessful military coup d’état against the Venezuelan government, then gone on television conceding that the coup had failed (“for now”) and accepting full responsibility, for which he ultimately did two years in prison. As president he even had his own weekly television show that often went on for hours. In short, he loved the camera. Nearly as much as he loved the sound of his own voice.
“Can I do anything else for you?” the waitress said in English.
“Yeah,” I said softly, my eyes still glued to the screen. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to take this entire order to go.”
Chapter 55
The drive from Caracas to Puerto La Cruz took us just under four hours. By the time we arrived it was full dark, but the festivities were still in full swing. The only question was whether el presidente had remained on the Caribbean Sea’s south shore or moved on to another venue to continue the party.
The obvious place to start was where I’d seen the president’s entourage on television. They’d been passing a city landmark, an enormous sea green crucifix situated on the Paseo Colón, a wide promenade just to the north of the city.
I parked the motorcycle down a side street and we headed toward the main road, locked hand in hand so that we wouldn’t be separated by the human current.
I was still hungry. I had been able to pay for the food at Restaurant Beirut, but that wiped me out of cash. I’d given Aubrey Lang my AmEx Blue, so all I had on me was my debit card, which wasn’t associated with any of the major banks. I’d need to stop at an ATM soon. And not only for food; in this job, you never knew when you might need cash to bargain for some vital intelligence.
At night, it seemed, the revelers were holding nothing back. The music was louder, the drunks drunker, the prostitutes selling hummers in just about every back alley and side street we passed.
“He must be gone by now,” Mariana said, speaking of the president.
I searched the crowd for a swarm of red shirts. When I didn’t find any, I looked for news cameras, someone holding a microphone, yelling into a lens over the riot.
Nothing.
“Simon?”
Even though it was a popular name in South America, thanks to Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan revolutionary who had led Latin America’s successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire, I instinctively turned my head.
“Simon Fisk,” the man said.
It took me a moment to recognize him. The man standing in front of me was Clifford Shermer, one of the wealthiest men to ever hire me, second only to Edgar Trenton. I’d last seen Shermer about six years ago, but age-wise he seemed to have lost a couple of decades since. He was tanner, thinner; the deep wrinkles he’d had when I worked for him were no longer carved into his skin. Botox, I supposed. Not bad, though he seemed to have sacrificed his ability to blink.
“Cliff,” I said, shaking his hand. “Good to see you.”
He smiled, ran his fingers through his thinning gray hair, possibly the only thing on him he hadn’t had touched up. “What brings you down here, Simon?”
When Cliff Shermer came to me six years ago, he was frantic. He’d been given my name by a U.S. Coast Guard officer who formerly worked on his yacht. Shermer had had an even wealthier wife named Jackie, and when the couple split, she’d decided to split with the kid. Just tore up the court’s custody order and took off for the south of France. There she hired private security, the best she could find, paid former French intelligence officers to hide her and her son in Monaco. It took me nearly three months to locate her. Another two to successfully retrieve the kid.
“On the job,” I said.
>
Cliff’s son, Kenny, was eight when he was taken, nine when I brought him back to the States. Which meant he’d be in high school now, back in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“Not the girl from L.A.?” Shermer said.
“That’s the one. Her last known position was Colombia, near the Venezuelan border.”
He glanced at Mariana and smiled. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Is your boat here?”
“Of course.” He motioned to the Caribbean. “Docked over by the pier.”
I nodded, looked around to make sure no one was listening in. “You still prepared for the threat of piracy?” I said.
“Oh, you bet. It’s worse than ever down here, Simon.”
“Think you can spare a piece?”
Shermer laid his thick hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “For the man who rescued Kenny from my ex? I can probably scare up a cannon.”
* * *
Shermer’s luxury yacht Rafalca bore the Cayman Islands flag. He welcomed us aboard and I immediately turned starboard to gaze out over the dark Caribbean Sea.
“Couple years ago,” Shermer said, “we were boarded by three young men wearing masks and wielding machetes. One of my crew lost his hand trying to be a hero.”
“Sorry to hear it,” I said as I moved back toward him and Mariana.
“Come downstairs.” He motioned for us to follow. “I have a friend who was boarded off the coast of Guatemala by a couple of pirates. Know what they did? They put a gun to his three-year-old son’s head.”
Mariana crossed herself.
“Another guy I know,” Shermer said, “he was boarded by four men in rubber masks. They raped his wife and kidnapped his twelve-year-old daughter.”
“Where was that?” I asked.
“Somewhere near Panama. They took seven grand in cash off the boat. This guy ignored the ransom demand. Instead, he and his wife immediately flagged down the Coast Guard. Coast Guard conducted a wide search and came up empty. They’ve never seen their daughter again.”
We walked through one stately room into another. In the second room, Shermer went to the far corner, knelt down, and carefully lifted a false floor.
Payoff Page 21
