by Layton Green
Up and down the precipitous stone steps of Cuzco they walked, through cobblestone corridors with twenty-foot-high walls, a city of stone and dust, stopping for a cup of coca leaf tea when they got light-headed from the altitude. The Quechuan vendors took them much more seriously than the tour guides, listening to their scholarly inquiries about ancient Incan spirits with humble nods of recognition. Still, no one claimed to have heard of a blue-painted indigenous woman terrorizing the countryside.
They stopped for dinner, grouper ceviche with toasted corn kernels and sweet potato. “Maybe this isn’t the place,” Lana said.
Grey washed down a bite of ceviche with a swig of Sol beer. “I suppose the General could have flown in from Bolivia or Chile for the meeting, but something feels right here. The remoteness of the setting, the belief system, the photo . . . let’s give it another day before we head to the villages.”
“We’ve talked to everyone in town.”
“Not everyone. There’s a great source of information we haven’t tapped yet.”
Lana raised her eyebrows, and Grey raised his beer. “Bartenders.”
They found a hotel for the night in San Blas, the artist quarter that climbed the hill a few streets away from the Plaza de Armas. After cleaning up, Lana wanted to stop at an Internet café before they hit the bars.
While Lana checked her email, Grey stepped outside on the street and tried Nya again.
Still no answer.
A female backpacker trudged up the steep street, breathing like an asthma sufferer, followed by an old woman in a black sombrero trying to show her a folder full of watercolors. Grey leaned a hand against the wall and let out a shuddering breath, his other hand balled into a fist.
“Grey.”
Lana was standing in the doorway of the café. Her face was pale. “Come inside. You need to see this.”
She led him to a computer monitor displaying a photo and a dossier underneath. It was stamped CIA Classified on the sides. The dossier was a few pages long, but everything after the first page was blacked out.
Grey honed in on the photo. Though he looked twenty years younger, it was without a doubt the same man from the photo Grey had taken from the Ganador house.
His fingers tightened on the mouse. “That’s him. Is it safe to do this here?”
“Not really. Just take a look. It’s a response to an inquiry I sent in Bogotá, retrieval of an archived file.”
“Why is half of it classified?”
“Read and we’ll talk.”
The first part was a character profile. It described a young man named Devon Taylor, an American born in Wisconsin to a military father and a Puerto Rican mother. Intelligence tests off the charts, educated at Dartmouth and then Yale Law in the early 1970s, recruited into the CIA after graduation.
Grey read through the detailed personality analysis, the gist of which was that Devon Taylor had high levels of intelligence and charisma but was a borderline sociopath, a person able to justify and implement difficult moral decisions. Someone who had no problem with the ends justifying the means.
Such a lovely turn of phrase, Grey thought, the ends justifying the means. So nice and sterile.
He read on. Devon Taylor had been given an interesting task at the CIA. They had planted him within the organization of Reverend Jim Jones, both to keep tabs on the cult and to study the mind-control methods of Jones himself.
Study the methods. The phrase set off alarm bells.
They created him, Grey thought. They put this young genius in the hands of a master manipulator, and he learned from him and improved.
He read about Tashmeni, the village girl who had borne Devon Taylor a child and with whom the CIA concluded he had fallen in love. He read about the growing unrest concerning the cult, the public outcry from Congressman Ryan, and then the tragedy in Guyana. According to the file, Devon Taylor had been gunned down by one of the Reverend’s bodyguards the night of the mass suicide, and had been found lying next to his lover and their infant child.
The rest was classified.
Grey read the profile two more times, absorbing the details, reading between the lines. “They tried to kill him,” he said softly. “Maybe they didn’t orchestrate the mass suicide—or maybe they did—but either way, if the CIA was that deep into Jonestown they would have sent a cleanup crew to destroy the evidence. And Devon had become part of the problem. He knew too much, his emotions were compromised by Tashmeni and her child. They couldn’t risk a spectacle.”
He looked up. Lana didn’t respond, but he saw the agreement in her eyes.
“But he escaped somehow,” Grey said, “and became the General.” He tapped a finger on the screen. “Someone like that, Lana, with that personality profile and that level of PTSD, he could have gone one of two ways. Either embraced his sociopathy or gone off the deep end. Maybe both. What else do you know about Jonestown?”
“I did some research when I couldn’t access his file. Except for what you just read, the public knows what I know. Jim Jones was a twisted cult leader, the CIA and the FBI and everyone else was keeping tabs on him, he had a congressman killed, and he orchestrated a mass suicide.”
“We both know there’s more to the story. The CIA had its hands all over Latin America.”
She bit her lip and gave a slow nod. “You know there’s a death tape available to the public, right? Jonestown Tape Q 042. The FBI released it under a FOIA request. It’s a live recording of the massacre.”
“I didn’t know that, but why does the FBI have it? They wouldn’t have been on the scene.”
“Exactly,” she murmured. “As shocking as it is, everyone on the inside knows that tape is sanitized.”
“You mean fake?”
“Oh, it’s not fake. In fact it’s rather chilling. But it’s harmless. At least to the CIA. Jones was a prolific recorder, but you know what’s missing on the hundreds of tapes we released of his worship services? Mention of his government ties. If Jones knew he was going to die and had any dirt on the CIA, and we know he did, then he would have recorded and tried to release it. Fortunately for the CIA, he was stuck in the Guyanese jungle and there was no Internet. But if he did record something, Q 042 isn’t that tape.”
“So why’re we talking about this?”
“Ever heard of Michael Prokes?” she asked.
“No.”
“He was one of the few Jonestown survivors, a former journalist who was a key player in the Reverend’s organization. Four months after Prokes returned from Guyana, he held a press conference and told a room full of people that the FBI and the CIA were withholding an audiotape of the massacre. Just after the press conference he committed suicide in a bathroom.”
She steepled her fingers and pressed them against her lips. “Most people think Stokes was referring to Q 042. But what if the release of Q 042 to the public was a smokescreen?”
“Designed to calm the conspiracy rumors and draw attention away from something damaging,” Grey said. “You think there’s a missing tape out there, don’t you? If there is, then the General has a copy, probably even the original.”
Lana’s eyes were fixated on the screen. The intensity of her stare was answer enough for Grey.
They closed out of the file and stepped outside. Lana was squatting with her back to the wall, Grey standing beside her. The street smelled like flowers wrapped in wet wool.
“Did the Deputy Director know all along?” she said rhetorically. “Who the General was? If he did, why not tell me?”
“Because it doesn’t matter,” Grey said. “Whoever the General used to be, he’s been someone else for a very long time. And revealing his ID could only,” he tapped the folder, “bring whatever else is in here to someone’s attention.”
“So why approve my request?” she said, then answered her own question. “To let me know I’m on the right track. And that there’re other things I don’t need to know about. Granting me access to this file was his seal of approval.”
“What a guy.”
“The General’s still the bogeyman, Grey. One of the world’s worst criminals and, after the file we’ve just seen, someone who probably has an unacceptable amount of leverage.”
“So why the rush now? If the General has sensitive information, he could have released it at any time. Obviously some sort of détente has been reached over the years.”
“Maybe something’s changed,” Lana said. “Maybe the stakes are higher, maybe the General has threatened to release sensitive information. I don’t know, and it’s not my job to ask.”
“That’s what the SS officers said. What if it’s something to do with your boss?”
“And if it is? Even more reason to go forward. He could be our President. Whose side are you on, anyway?”
He started to walk away, and she grabbed his arm from behind. “I’m sorry. You came for me in Bogotá and I’ll never forget that.” She stepped around to face him. “Look, I don’t expect you to stick around. The General’s going to throw everything he has at us. If he finds us before we find him, we’re worse than dead. I can keep asking around about the cult by myself. You should go home. You deserve a medal for what you’ve done.”
Grey shook his arm free and started walking down the hill, towards San Blas Square. He didn’t want a medal. He wanted Fred Hernandez and Sekai to still be alive, he wanted a reckoning for every child who had accepted a crack rock or a gun from someone in the General’s organization.
And most of all, he wanted to know that Nya Mashumba was safe and sound in Zimbabwe.
Lana started walking behind him. “Where’re you going?”
“To that pub on the corner.”
It was at the seventh bar, an Irish pub just off the Plaza de Armas, that they got their tip. Lana got him talking: a skinny, pockmarked kid from Lima with a quick wit and an easy smile. He had been slinging drinks in town for less than a year but seemed to know everyone, gringos and locals alike.
Lana had already given him the researcher spiel. Grey was at a cocktail table behind her, scanning for trouble. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lana lean forward.
“And if I were looking for someone who knew the sierra like no one else,” she said, her hair spilling over the bar and wearing an intoxicated smile she didn’t have to fake, “who would be my guy?”
The bartender put his hands on the counter, ignoring the raised beer mugs of a pair of Western Europeans in mountaineer gear. “I know just the man,” he said, “but it’ll cost you.”
“Is that right?”
“Only a fool gives a pretty girl something for free. You have to promise me I’ll see you in here again, when it’s less crowded, so we can have a proper conversation.”
Lana stirred her cocktail, the corners of her lips upturned. “Deal.”
The bartender winked at her, went into a flurry of action for his other customers, then returned a few minutes later with a piece of paper.
“The street’s a few blocks behind the Temple of the Sun. Ask around if you can’t find it. The guy you want is Pepe, he trades all over the sierra. Our version of a gypsy. You’re in luck, he’s in town for the week.”
Grey and Lana tried a few more places, staying out until the last bar closed. As they slunk back through the long and claustrophobic streets of the old town, Grey kept expecting a group of narcos to emerge from the darkness. Both he and Lana had their hands on Smith & Wesson revolvers that Lana had procured from one of the stalls in the central market. The woman seemed to know every black market vendor west of the Atlantic.
The gun gave Grey little confidence, but the only trouble they encountered on the walk back was a group of local teens who shouted a few machismo taunts at Lana, insouciance oozing out of their cheap leather jackets.
Grey’s and Lana’s hotel was a former colonial mansion divided into smaller rooms, with balconies that overlooked Plaza San Blas. Before turning in, Grey had a glass of water on the balcony, staring down at the pretty square lit by globe lanterns.
Lana joined him. “Not drunk after twelve beers?”
“I had about half of each.”
“Ah.”
Her body language was tense beside him, as if she had something to say. He waited her out, guessing the subject before she voiced it, knowing it was why she had let herself get hammered in the middle of a mission.
“It happened again,” she said. “Someone took my freedom from me.”
“They used scopolamine, Lana. It could have happened to anyone. You can’t blame yourself.”
She was staring straight ahead. “I can and I will. I thought I had put all of that behind me . . . but who knows what happened to me when I was in there. Both times. Did they gang rape me, put me on video, place bets on how long each of them would last?”
He placed a hand on her forearm. “Don’t, Lana. They can’t take anything from you, not unless you let them.”
“Thanks for the pop psychology.”
“It’s true.”
Grey looked down and noticed her knuckles were white from squeezing the railing. “I don’t really care if I live through this,” she said. “I stopped caring about that a long time ago.” Her eyes found his, twin pools of sadness and rage. “And I know you know what I mean.”
He knew what she meant, and she was not wrong to think that of him. But as he thought of Nya for the hundredth time that day, his insides churning with worry, he wondered if he still felt the same.
After lingering over coffee and breakfast at the hotel, giving the trader time to set up, Grey and Lana headed out just after nine.
They found the street without having to ask, a snake’s belly of stone a few blocks past the tourist section, populated by a line of children sleeping on blankets beside their parents. Near the middle of the street, a doorway set into the stone wall led to a courtyard lit by a pocket of weak sunlight. It was rife with the grassy, bittersweet smell of brewed coca leaves.
A greasy long-haired Quechuan was sitting cross-legged on a blanket, surrounded by a dozen other blankets piled high with natural-dye alpaca clothing, jewelry, wooden pipes, and children’s trinkets. Three women in colorful shawls lingered on the edges of the courtyard, watching a handful of stout Quechuan children who looked like walking thimbles.
The trader noticed Grey and Lana, saluting them with a clear plastic cup of what was probably homemade chicha beer. Grey scanned the courtyard for danger, in case someone had gotten to the bartender. Satisfied it wasn’t a setup, he moved to where he could watch the entrance, and let Lana conduct the conversation.
Before engaging, she selected a few items to purchase, textiles and silver jewelry, to make the trader more amenable to conversation. Dressed in jeans and scuffed sandals and a moth-eaten sport coat, a wooden necklace splayed over a faded black-and-white-striped dress shirt, the Quechuan man watched her like a cat eying a songbird as she sifted through the goods. When she approached and sat beside him to pay, she complimented him on his wares and told him that she and Grey were in Peru on a research assignment.
Unlike the bartender, the trader didn’t seem captivated by Lana. He was smiling and waving his hands as he talked, but his smile was predatory. When she told him about the blue Indian lady, he made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a laugh, and fingered an embroidered cloth bag hanging from his belt.
“You want to do some coca tourism, I see,” he said, his Spanish accent surprisingly neutral. Grey couldn’t even tell if he was Peruvian.
“Sorry?” Lana said. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
He leered at her. “Aren’t you? Your friend over there doesn’t look like much of a scholar. And neither of you are dressed to be traipsing through the sierra. It’s okay,” he held up the embroidered bag and grinned, “I know what you’re looking for.”
As if to prove his point, he pulled out a wad of coca leaves from the bag and stuffed them into the side of his mouth. “Yes, I know where you want to go. Would you like a few bags for the journey?”
Grey was watching the entrance as he kept an eye on Lana and the trader, but he had heard the man loud and clear. I know where you want to go.
Lana gave a nonchalant shrug. “Why not?”
He called out an order, and a woman stood with a roll of her hips and moved towards a blanket in the corner.
The trader gave Lana a sly grin and ran a hand through his hair, strands of which fell across his chest. “I know you’re looking for the other thing, the thing you gringos like. I like that too. You won’t find it in that place, but of course you know that. You’re making friends, looking for connections. You’re smart to look here and not Colombia, the Colombians are devils in human skin. And it’s no good in Bolivia anymore, the cocaleros there have unions, if you can believe such a thing. But here in Peru, we’re wild and free and lawless. You can make little connections here and there in the sierra, find your own heart of darkness.”
“I don’t suppose you can point us to anyone in particular?” Lana said. “Someone who might give you a kickback?”
He spat. “I choose this life because I want it. I answer to no narco, no government, no son of a bitch communist guerrilla.”
Lana put her hands up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t meant to insult you. But you said you know where we’re trying to go?”
One of the women approached Lana and shoved two of the patterned cloth bags in her hands, stuffed with coca leaves. As she waddled away, the trader said, “I don’t know where you heard the rumor about Mama Huaco, no one outside the sierra talks about such things.” He shook his head, his leer replaced by a grim smirk. “People who know of the old ways avoid that village. You should choose another. That’s my advice, free of charge for your purchases.”
Lana slid three hundred-dollar bills out of her wallet and placed them on the table. “This should more than cover it, I should think? And if we did want to go? What would you advise?”
He snatched the bills with a flick of his fingers, but his smirk only deepened. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s not about the coca. You gringos come here with stars in your eyes, you think the Incas were this mystical race of people who read coca leaves and planted quinoa and made love under the stars. Children of the earth, innocents slaughtered by the Spanish.” He again ran a hand through his greasy hair. “No no no, my friend. Ask the Chancas and the Huancas how peaceful the Incas were. Ask the dead enemies whose flayed skin was used to make war drums. Ask those who were sacrificed to the apus, their livers and brains and kidneys consumed by the Inca priests.”
