by Fiona Quinn
Each night Anansi crawled out of his burial hole and ate some roasted sweet potato. Soon the family started to notice that their plant was not producing as much food as they expected. They devised a plan. They decided to make a man out of tree sap and put it in the garden.
Later that night Anansi crawled out of his hole and saw the man in the light of the crescent moon. Anansi was afraid that the man would take all of the sweet potatoes so he went to attack the man. Anansi got all eight of his legs stuck in the tree sap.
The next morning Anansi’s family came out to see if there trap caught the sweet potato thief, and they found Anansi alive, but not so well, stuck in their trap.”
“That’s it?” Deep put his fork down on his empty plate.
“Yup.”
“Is there a reason you’re thinking about this story?” he asked.
“It’s one of the ways my brain gives me information. You know, like my subconscious is working through a problem in the present tense, and I’m given a bridge to the answer that I picked up in the past tense. Most people do this; sometimes they’re unaware that they should be listening. A lot of times it’s a song that gets stuck in your head. For example, what do you think about when you think about Ghianna? Do you have a song?”
“Probably the one I think about when she’s not with me is Epic’s Lier’s Eye, he said. “But I sing it ‘Ghianna’ instead of ‘Donna.’”
“Isn’t that the one about. . .” Chris stopped and shoved a huge bite of food in his mouth, making a show of chewing it. The other men let their focus land distractedly around the room, giving Deep a little privacy as blood rose to his face.
“Deep, it’s not a foolproof system. You know — don’t take it too literally. Your subconscious might not be warning you that Ghianna’s fooling around so much as it could be telling you that you would care if she were — that it would devastate you. Maybe you have more invested in the relationship than what you’re thinking on the surface.” Deep didn’t seem to buy my interpretation. I floundered around for something he could accept. “It could even be as simple as you like the tune and Ghianna rhymes with Donna.” Shoot. That wasn’t how I expected the conversation to go, why couldn’t he have said something fun and happy? Like Lumineers’ Ho Hey? Or even Phillip Phillips’ Home?” Deep still looked unconvinced.
I reached out to put my hand on Deep’s arm to make him listen to what I was saying not just hear placating words coming out of my mouth. “So don’t go running off accusing her of something that’s probably not happening.”
“If that song played in your head when you thought of Striker, what would you do?” Deep asked.
“To be honest? I’d try to figure it out. You can’t pick the most obvious solution. Sometimes the subconscious is subtle, especially when you’re not used to listening and deciphering.” I squeezed my hand where it rested on his arm. “Promise me you’re not going to go off the deep end, excuse the pun. Don’t take this conversation too literally.”
Deep wiped the hard line of his mouth with his fingers. He was pissed.
Blaze came to the rescue, changing the subject back to where I had started. “And your ‘Anansi is stuck in the gum-man’ bridge leads you where exactly?”
“To Marcos Sylanos,” I said.
“You still think Sylanos is alive?” Blaze leaned forward, his gaze intent.
“I know he’s alive. I can feel him alive. I can feel him laughing at us as he hides in his dark hole, coming out while no one’s looking and taking what he wants.” My eyes had hardened. No fluff-mode here. I was ready for battle. “I want to get him. I want to trap him and expose him just like Anansi.”
“How does this lead back to Omega, and you?” Blaze piled more food onto his plate.
“I’m not sure it does. But the same players keep showing up.” I shook my head. “I can’t figure out who is competing on what team is all. Or if they aren’t all on the same team, for that matter. Omega should have given up on me by now, don’t you think? Maybe I can go back to Washington to work on this.”
Blaze and Deep shot a glance to each other.
“Okay, I take it Omega hasn’t given up. How do you know that?”
My two teammates seemed to have a full conversation with their eyes in a language that I didn’t understand and couldn’t interpret until the final raised eyebrow that asked “should we say?”
“Spill. What are you guys hiding?” I ordered. They weren’t in my line command, but my job title did give me a certain amount of authority. Wait, I didn’t have a job. Command took me off the payroll.
“Omega put tails on us. All of us,” Blaze said hesitantly. “We can’t seem to shake them. We can’t leave Iniquus without someone showing up in our rearview mirror.”
“But if you’re undercover, Omega chasing you would increase your visibility and put you guys in danger.” I scanned the faces of my teammates.
“We need to be out working to prove we’re out working,” Deep said. “We’ve had to take on a lot of out of state and overseas assignments to get us away from Omega operatives. Jack was outed the other day. He lost the tango. It killed the case. Nearly killed Jack.”
“He didn’t say,” I muttered, trying to assimilate this piece of news. I looked at my lap while I processed. Cases were being blown, which would hurt Iniquus’ reputation. And worse, I was putting my guys in the direct path of danger. I thought I was the only one at risk, and now come to find out, my team was in jeopardy because of me. Here I was safely tucked away from harm, and my team was out being stalked by assassins. They wouldn’t be safe until I solved the case, or I was captured and dead. Rendition with final tap, that’s what Frith told Spencer. A shiver racked my body.
Randy looked up from his phone. He had been sitting at the end of the table watching all of this play out. “Text from Axel – ATF got clearance and the interrogation is set for Monday afternoon.”
Twenty-One
Randy, Deep, Blaze, and I were in the provisional Puzzle Room in the east wing of Casa Striker. I had sent Laura home early telling her I had a raging migraine.
We had a visual from Axel’s cam glasses – not the best in terms of clarity. Axel was suffering from allergies. His sneezing gave the whole interview a rollercoaster feel, or maybe that was just my stomach doing loopty-loops.
I needed this to go well. I wanted answers. The audio was staticky. That was the problem when depending on the spyware for real-time information. The sound recordings that Axel would send over later would be cleaner.
Julio was ushered into the room. He sat down, as he had seated himself for all ten of the federal attorney’s interviews. He positioned himself for the impassive long haul. There were no introductions. On the computer screen, I saw Axel’s hand push a piece of paper forward. It was exactly like the papers that Julio had created, displayed, confettied, and flushed each Sunday. This one had the next code.
Julio looked down at the paper. He looked at his knees. His lips moved ever so slightly as he calculated in that genius head of his. He looked up, and a bead of sweat slid down the left side of his face.
“Brody is in custody. He’s very cooperative,” Axel said.
Julio looked blankly at Axel, and his shoulders gave a slight shrug. He didn’t seem to know the name Brody.
“Brody Covington is the legal name of the man who visited you each week to get the codes, and now he’s working with us.”
“Oh. He’s on my visitor list as B. Henry Covington. Covington doesn’t know how to produce the codes.” Julio’s voice had a fey quality, like he wasn’t living in his body but floated outside his corporeal self.
“Fibonacci,” Axel said.
Julio blinked rapidly. He ran his handcuffed palms up and down his pants legs. His right foot started to tap, tap, tap on the floor. Axel let him sit in distress. Neither Axel nor the ATF agent, Ken Dalton, moved or spoke.
“I’m dead then,” Julio said very softly.
“Not necessarily. Today’s Monday. We h
ave until next Sunday to take over for Brody. We understand your codes. We need to know how you’re applying them and what they’re protecting.”
“Me,” Julio whispered. “They’re protecting me.”
“Not anymore they aren’t, unless you get real cooperative real fast,” Dalton said.
Julio nodded. “May I have some water, please?”
Dalton picked up the pitcher sitting beside him on the gunmetal gray table and poured the water into a plastic cup, holding it out. Julio sipped, put the cup back on the table, and focused on his feet. “The number codes connect to a computer housed at my CPA’s office in Sacramento. It’s actually their computer. They have no idea I placed a program on their hard drive. The Fibonacci code is entered each Sunday before eight P.M., and nothing happens.”
“What happens this coming Sunday at 8:01 if no code is inputted?” Dalton asked.
“If I was not dead already? They’d kill me, and Maria would be killed as well.”
“You know that Maria is in prison for kidnapping and murder?” Axel asked.
Julio nodded. “When Covington started coming, I knew something bad had happened. I didn’t know what for a long time, until I saw her in the newspaper.”
“Did you help her plan the kidnapping?” Axel used the same soft monotone that he used with Hector. It had a hypnotic quality to it that made me want to share my innermost secrets. I’d have to watch my tongue around Axel.
“I have not spoken to my wife since I was arrested. Everything I know about India Sobado comes from the paper. I can tell you that Maria was never going after those children the way they reported. Maria loves babies, always wanted her own. Eight. She wanted to have eight children. It was the Sobado woman Maria was after. I’m sure of it.”
“Why would Maria want to kidnap Miss Sobado?” Dalton asked. He rested with his thigh on the table and his arms crossed over his chest. He tilted his head back, and the whole set up gave him an arrogant, almost pugnacious, air. I thought that stance probably didn’t play well with Julio. Dalton should soften up.
“Maria is not a very educated woman.” Julio’s eyes took on the distant look of introspection. “I think in her mind, she believes America works the same as in Honduras, that she could trade Sobado for me. Sobado must have some connection to wealth or political power. I would imagine Maria was trying to set up a trade.” Julio sighed deeply and gave a sad shake of his head. His gaze moved back to his shoes. Guilt? Embarrassment? No. Shame, I think.
“I read in the papers that Sobado died in a plane crash over the Gulf,” Julio said. “I have to assume that my wife hid Sobado with her family in Honduras, that Sobado was able to escape, and was trying to fly home when the storm hit.”
“India Sobado was on the East Coast of Honduras,” Axel replied. He sat on a metal folding chair in front of Julio with his knees apart and his hands resting naturally on his thighs. In my opinion, this was the best approach for Julio – to be on the same level. Open. Non-threatening.
“Yes, so it was with her uncle, then. He runs a prison. That would be the perfect place to hide the girl,” Julio said.
“What’s the uncle’s name?” asked Dalton.
“Alejandro Castillo,” Julio reached for the cup with shackled wrists and took another sip.
“Why would Maria take such a risk?” Axel asked, his voice colored with compassion as he leaned slightly forward.
“I would like to say it’s because she loves me,” Julio gave a little laugh. “I imagine the real reason she did this was she is afraid of poverty. She didn’t want to go back to her life in Honduras.” There was a long silence. Then Julio continued to muse. “She has no way to earn a living. She would be a maid or a street vendor, living hand to mouth. She is here illegally. We both are. I let my work visa run out after I left Google.”
“Maria didn’t want to live with your parents in Tegucigalpa?” asked Axel casually.
Julio flinched. He stared hard at the wall behind Axel’s left shoulder. “You are very thorough.”
Neither Dalton nor Axel responded.
“My parents would not have helped her. You probably already know I’ve not personally had contact with them in over a decade,” Julio sighed loudly. During this interrogation, Julio’s gaze seemed to land around the room like a bird hopping from branch to branch, but he never looked directly at Axel or Dalton. “Sacrifices had to be made so that I could provide for my parents and provide for Maria and myself. I’m sure that my family believes it is Maria who has kept me away. They are not softhearted, forgiving people, my family.”
“What if Maria was successful in effecting a prisoner exchange?” Axel asked.
“Maria did not understand that the people she was saving me from, and the people who she thought would save us, are one and the same.”
“She wanted to get you out so you could continue to work for Sylanos?” Axel adjusted his glasses, making the image waver.
“Yes, I believe that’s what she was doing.”
“But you think you are in prison because of Sylanos,” Axel said.
“I know I am.”
“I’m listening,” Axel sneezed, then blew his nose.
Julio twitched around in his chair. His head nodded slightly back and forth rhythmically as the mechanisms in his brain whirred. Finally, he pulled his lips in and shook his head no. He wasn’t going to cooperate. Our having the codes wasn’t enough. He still thought his best chance at survival lay in silence.
“Here is the fault with you codes,” Axel said. “It was very risky to set up this way, human error being what it is. People aren’t dependable like computers. Maria could have gotten sick, or incapacitated, even dead. Then what? What if she found someone else to take care of her? Another man? A man named Hector?”
Julio’s eyes were black onyx, hard and opaque. “I trusted Maria over the short run. My imprisonment shouldn’t have gone on this long. I thought it would only be three weeks, four at the most.”
“Before what?” asked Dalton.
“Before I was released.”
“You were tried for terrorism,” Dalton said.
Julio nodded.
“Very quickly, too,” Dalton pressed on. There was something threatening in his tone, though his voice quality didn’t demonstrably change. “Usually it takes a year or so to mount a case. This one came to trial in two weeks. That’s highly unusual.”
“My crimes have nothing to do with terrorism. They needed me on ice, and they have power in all the right places. They can make almost anything happen.”
“This is Sylanos?” asked Dalton.
Julio nodded. “Sylanos, yes. And those who benefit from Sylanos.”
“If they needed you on ice why didn’t they take you out?” I couldn’t actually see Dalton as he spoke. Axel remained focused on Julio.
“They’d like to. They’re trying to figure out what to do with me. I don’t fit neatly into the plan.”
“How so?” asked Axel.
“I was tired of crouching under the radar in fear. I had lived very frugally here in America. Sylanos laughed at me, my little apartment, my modest lifestyle. I sent money to my parents, as you know. Not a huge amount for living in the US but very nice — a very nice lifestyle — for living in Honduras. I put money in an offshore account. I was going to get enough together so Maria and I never had to worry, and then I was going to leave.”
“You have enough together now. You were making noises like you might be leaving the organization,” Axel said.
“I can’t walk away. They have people everywhere. I have watched the cartel deal with their retirees before. I needed to leave with their permission.”
“And that explains Maria.”
Julio lifted an eyebrow.
“Maria knows that you stashed the money. She doesn’t know how to get to it.”
Julio licked his teeth behind closed lips.
“We know that you were involved in the first leg of the Sylanos shipping triangle. We know you
were involved in bootlegging software and entertainment – movies, music, games. They have no one else who could do this?” Axel asked.
“I have a master’s degree in software design. It would take someone with my level of education to carry on.”
“A big asset,” Axel said. “I imagine it would be hard to recruit someone like you.”
“Exactly,” Julio said.
“You were friends with Marcos’ cousin, Amondos.”
Julio nodded gravely. “Dead. Him and his wife Beth.”
Axel shook his head, making the computer picture nauseating to watch. “Beth is alive. She’s an informant for the CIA.”
The shock on Julio’s face was almost comically drawn.
“It’s Sylanos who is dead.” Axel delivered this piece of news like he was ramming a knife between Julio’s ribs.
Julio sat like a frozen rabbit, waiting for the fox to move on by. Then he threw his head back. Julio’s laugh burst from his lungs. It was too big for his small frame and bent him in half, almost dumping him from his chair. Tears slid out the corners of his eyes as he righted himself. Julio used the sleeve of his orange jumpsuit to wipe his face dry.
“Good one. If Sylanos were dead, I’d be dead.”
Axel slid the newspaper clips over to Julio. Julio was reticent to pick them up. He looked at the articles laying on the table for a long time. “These are in Spanish,” he said finally.
“This was reported in South and Central American papers. It’s not newsworthy in the US. No one knows Sylanos’s power up here,” Axel replied.
After several minutes, Julio reached out his hands and pulled the papers into his lap. He read each one, and then read them again.
Without looking up, Julio said, “The truth is, I didn’t ask Sylanos to release me from the organization. I knew that was the kiss of death. I went to the Attorney General.”
“Here in Florida?” Dalton asked.
