Heart of the World

by Linda Barnes

  It was extremely cynical of me to think that sex was a great way to pass the time when you didn’t want to answer questions. But I thought it all the same.

  He placed a mocking hand over his heart. “I tell you nothing but the truth.”

  I grasped the opening like a drowning sailor grabbing a life ring. “As long as you’re telling the truth, why did you ask me to describe Naylor? Did you ask your mamas about the limping man?”

  “They say only that the future is clouded.” He patted the bed. “So perhaps we should take advantage of the present?”

  Perhaps we should, I thought. But even though his eyes were Paolina’s eyes, I didn’t completely trust him. And then there was Sam.

  “I don’t think so.” My robe had come open. I snugged its rough fabric closely around me and his eyes, so very much like Paolina’s, lost their liquid warmth and slowly hardened. In no time, he was the remote man of the mountain again, the aloof and stoic priest.

  “You should get dressed, then.” He blew out a breath and made an effort to straighten his rumpled clothes. “Senor Cabrera would like to meet you.”

  As soon as he closed the door, I wanted to call him back, hold him and kiss him, and smell the moist earthy scent of him. Pull his mouth down to my waiting breast.

  Jesus, Carlyle, I told myself, take a shower.

  When I found it, the small bathroom down the hall had only a sink and a toilet. I splashed water on my overheated face. I was toweling it dry when the dream came back—the urn, the fire, the mechanically altered voice.

  In the States, where kidnapping is a federal offense, where the FBI is so successful at catching and prosecuting offenders that the crime is rare, kidnappers use a voice-alterer on the assumption that relevant phones will be quickly tapped by the Bureau. Because if the kidnappers are brought to trial, none of them wants to sit at the defense table listening to his own taped voice played back for the benefit of a jury. But here, where, according to Luisa Cabrera, kidnapping was commonplace, where it was illegal to pay a ransom, where the police didn’t get involved, where kidnappers were seldom, if ever, caught, why go to the bother and expense of acquiring and using such a machine?

  Could it be, I wondered, hanging the towel on the bar, because Roldan would know, would recognize the kidnapper’s voice?

  CHAPTER 34

  My jeans had been mended and pressed; my torn, bloodstained T-shirt replaced by a man’s guayabera, too big through the shoulders, but whole and clean. I dressed, then sat on the bed and inspected the skin on my feet. Blisters had subsided. The skin felt tender, but was far from the ragged mess I’d feared. I used the cream, slipped on soft leather moccasins, and went in search of Roldan and Senor Cabrera, trying to recall the twists and turns that had led me to the small room with the daybed and the phone.

  I found myself in an enormous tile-floored dining room dominated by a table that could seat twenty, with half that number of high-backed chairs surrounding it. One long wall was filled with light and windows. Peering out I saw a huge grassy courtyard, and the basic design of the house was revealed: a main building, two long low wings. I headed toward the main building and the distant rumble of voices.

  In the big front room the gilded chandelier and the patterned carpet spoke of better days. A grand piano hunkered in an alcove. The furniture was plump and faded, beige with a rose-colored print. Roldan sat on the edge of a worn armchair, deep in conversation with an elderly gentleman in a cane rocker. As he rocked the chair gave the familiar half-sigh, half-squeak I still associate with my late aunt Bea, a woman who endlessly rocked as she knitted. A comforting sound in a strange place.

  The old man was as elegant and worn as the room in a beige linen suit, white shirt, and striped tie, with a magnificent mane of ash-colored hair. He stood as soon as he saw me; his head dipped in half a formal bow. His jowls quivered. He held an unlit pipe in his left hand. Roldan made introductions: Senor Gilberto Cabrera Fortas met Senorita Carlotta Carlyle.

  “You were a friend of my niece?” The old man’s voice was shaky.

  “I barely knew her.”

  “Just as well. It was her friends who got her killed.”

  I’d had a hand in it, too, but no one was making me kneel on broken shells so I decided against confession.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  He sank into his rocking chair, turning his attention to a leather album on a round piecrust table. Next to the album sat a pile of newspapers, a long thin scissors, and a jar of paste. I inhaled the scent of schoolroom collages.

  “She was a fine writer,” he said. “When my brother, her father, died, the senior editor himself insisted she have his job. Rivals at the paper were jealous, but she proved herself worthy. You read her work?”

  I nodded; if I hadn’t, maybe she’d still be alive.

  “Luisa and I agreed on nothing.” He raised the pipe to his lips, noticed that it was unlit, but made no effort to light it. “I work within the system; I believe in the system. I believe in democracy, not endless, senseless war.”

  Roldan broke in. “How is it possible to have democracy when the only choice is between two of the same, between peas in a pod?”

  Cabrera held up a hand. “I won’t argue with you, Roldan. Not today.” He turned his sad eyes on me. “I fought with Luisa every time I saw her, which was never often enough, but I saved every single thing she wrote. I underlined the phrases I particularly enjoyed, little things that made me smile, deft jabs of the knife. I cut them out and pasted them in this book. I thought after I died, she would see, and know how proud I was of her. Now—I’m a stupid old man.”

  His mournful eyes were sharp and clear. He sounded more like an angry man than a stupid one, and I hoped his fury wouldn’t target Roldan before we got a chance to rescue Paolina. One phone call from Cabrera, a man Roldan had earlier described as still politically well-connected, and Roldan could disappear forever. The DAS, the Colombian army, the police, any official body would be delighted to haul him off to prison.

  I said, “Your niece, had she been in touch recently?”

  “We spoke on the phone. She was doing a piece about the native tribes of the northeast. She asked me to find out if there was anything odd going on in the government. She’d heard rumors of some kind of plot—you hear these things—a conspiracy between the U.S. and the Colombian government to harm the aboriginal peoples. I still have friends in positions of power. They talk to me, but I could find no trace of such a thing.”

  “Did she ask you anything else?”

  “We argued less over the phone. Only a few days ago, she wanted to know whether I’d heard anything linking Base Eighteen—the army elite, mind you—to drug dealing.” He gave a small laugh. “That I would like to prove. And before that, there was something. Ah, this will interest you, Roldan. She asked if I knew how Angel Navas died.”

  “Did you find out?” I said.

  “I didn’t need to; I already knew. He died badly. In the U.S., in prison.”

  Roldan stood abruptly. “Gilberto, you should rest now. I’ll call Amalia.” He walked to a curtained window, shifted the fabric, and stared out at the patio. “Let’s take a walk, Carlotta.”

  The old man rocked, puffing his unlit pipe. We excused ourselves, and went out through the French doors. The house had been hot, but outside it was worse, humid and oppressive. Rain hung in the air but didn’t fall. Vegetation tried to choke the narrow pathway, cracking the flagstones.

  “Is Amalia a relative?” I asked.

  “She’s worked here since I was a boy.”

  “What are the chances she’s already called the police?”

  “Nonexistent. She used to bandage my knees when I came in from roughhousing. When we arrived, Gilberto sent the other servants home.”

  “They’ll be suspicious.”

  “I doubt it. He’s a moody man at best, very busy. Often he shuts the place up on a moment’s notice and flies to Bogota. Government affairs.”

  “
Are we close to Cartagena here?”

  “Closer than we were.”

  Close enough to abandon the decrepit aircraft, I hoped. “And we’re going to do exactly what they told you. Follow orders.”

  He nodded, but his thoughts seemed far away, either back in the farmhouse with the man in the rocking chair or farther, in the primitive village of gumdrop-shaped huts, or on the mountaintop.

  “Tell me about this Fort of San Felipe,” I said. “The place you’re supposed to bring the ransom.”

  He returned to the present with a flicker of his eyelids. “It was built to keep out pirates, like all the forts in Cartagena.”

  It was old, then. “Big?”

  “Yes. It’s open to the public, like a museum.”

  “So you think it will be safe? We’ll walk in, do the swap, walk out?”

  “I will walk in. Alone, as they asked. I’ll send her out to you.”

  “Carrying hundreds of pounds of gold?”

  “Carrying a sample of the gold, as a guarantee. The rest will be in a locker at the airport. I’ll surrender the key. That’s how they want it.”

  “You think it will work? You think you’ll walk out?”

  His feet scuffed the dirt along the path. “I think it may work for you. They may let Paolina go. As for me—” He shrugged.

  “You don’t believe they mean to let you go.”

  “They insisted I bring the gold. Me and no one else. Anyone could bring it. All the gold could be left at the airport; I could have mailed the key. Kidnapping is very common here. There are ways to arrange the ransom.” He shrugged again, and a smile played at the corners of his mouth. “You’ve seen pictures of the fort?”

  My turn to shrug.

  “It’s a true fortress. Each level can be sealed, so that if the pirates took one level, the defenders could hold the rest until reinforcements came. It was the scene of many famous battles. I assume they wouldn’t go there unless they had the ability to secure the fort, and the ability to secure the fort could only come from the military.”

  I pursed my lips and gave a low whistle. “So we assume the fort is a trap.”

  “Whether I go from there to jail or directly to the hereafter is the only question.”

  “Not by a long shot.”

  Roldan raised his eyebrows. I stopped walking, waited till he turned and looked me in the eye.

  “There are plenty of other questions. Like, why don’t you level with me?”

  “I’m not sure of this idiom, level”

  “It means, tell the truth.”

  “Which part of my intuition do you doubt?”

  “I don’t doubt your intuition.” I thought it likely someone wanted Roldan dead. “I doubt that you’re giving away the gold.”

  He bent and picked up a pebble, weighed it in his hand. “You saw the men load it on the plane.”

  “I saw them load heavy bags.”

  “There is gold,” he said. “The mamas gave me several items, enough to bargain for Paolina’s freedom. They said it was a debt they owed to pay for their mistake.”

  “What mistake?”

  That faint grin again. “Saving my life. They’ve survived all these years by staying apart. Other Indian tribes take what we give them, alcohol and guns. They covet what we have, television and airplanes, and they lose their souls. Because the Kogi refuse to want what we want, they survive.”

  “What’s in the rest of the bags?”

  He held out the pebble. “Rocks, stones.”

  “So you believe we’re being watched, that someone reported the bags being loaded on the plane.”

  “Someone always talks,” Roldan said. “Plato o plomo.Someone will talk.”

  We came to the end of the flagstones and passed through a wrought-iron gate. The path changed to gravel and veered to the right, and then we were strolling through a formal rose garden. I wondered how many gardeners had been dismissed for the day, and with whom they were currently gossiping.

  I said, “Senor Cabrera has friends in the government. Would he help?”

  “I’m not among his favorite causes. Gilberto’s old. He wants to be left alone with his roses.”

  The bushes were grouped according to color in neat concentric circles separated by manicured gravel paths. The contrast with the wild vegetation of the Sierra Nevada couldn’t have been sharper. I missed the green smell of the trees, the chatter of birds.

  “The government would shoot me on sight,” Roldan said.

  I didn’t need to lean down to sniff the roses; their perfume was everywhere, overpoweringly sweet. “You know who has her.”

  “Do you like roses?”

  “One of the photos in my bag, you recognized it.”

  “They always make me think of funerals.”

  “The woman or the man?”

  “It’s more of a memory.” He tossed the pebble in the air, caught it with quick fingers. “She looks like someone I used to know.”

  “Who?”

  “I had a friend…” He paused to discard the pebble, then started speaking again. “She could be Angel Navas’s former wife. I’m not a hundred percent sure.”

  I thought he was.

  “If it were Ana,” he continued, “she would despise me.” “Why?”

  I waited while he gathered his thoughts.

  “I should have confessed this long ago. Not to you, but to the mamas. There are cleansing rituals, for those who come willingly to confession, rituals that return the soul to harmony.”

  I bit my lip, convinced interruption would only prolong the process, but every minute seemed stretched to the breaking point, every minute another minute Paolina was alone, needing me.

  “Angel.” He breathed in the word like the rose-scented air, pronouncing it dnhel, with the “g” sounded like the Spanish “j” but more rasping. “We were friends and then we were partners, but more and more he saw himself as the leader, the one who made the decisions. Many of those decisions I disagreed with. He became dangerous.”

  “What do you mean, dangerous?”

  “Like a wild animal. Unpredictable. I used drugs to make money, but he saw drugs as a cause in themselves. He started using the product, snorting cocaine like he had a hole in his head to fill with it. Then he tried basuco, the cocaine base. He got crazy. Once, I saw him shoot a man for target practice, to test the sight on a new gun. I should have killed him then, but I waited for my old friend to recover, to find himself again. Then he made plans to sell my people and me, and ….”

  “Yes?”

  “I should have looked him in the eye and killed him then, stabbed him with a knife, killed him like a man. He deserved that much from me.”

  I waited.

  “Instead, I set him up,” Roldan said. “I gave him to the military as a decoy, a distraction for another strike I’d planned, a raid on an armory. And they took him. In the action, he was wounded. They killed his wife. They killed his baby son. I did not know they would be there with him.”

  “But his wife is alive.”

  “Ana was his wife before Melania, the one who died. He left Ana when the other woman was pregnant, because Ana couldn’t have children. She understood, or she seemed to. She still loved him, even when he was crazy with basuco”

  Would she have contacts in the States? Contacts with corporations that owned and flew helicopters in foreign countries?

  “Navas was extradited,” I said.

  “With fanfare. The trial was in Miami. Jailed for life. When I heard that he died there, I hoped they’d send his body home for burial. ‘Better a grave in Colombia than a jail cell in the United States.’ That was the motto of those who called themselves the Extraditables, Escobar and Rodriguez Gacha, all the dead outlaws.”

  “Is that what the Kogi saw for you in their vision? A grave? Death?”

  “If I had the powers of the mamas, perhaps we could find our way out of this mess.”

  “What powers?”

  “The power to open the mo
untains, the power to communicate through the mind, to levitate.”

  I imagined the pointy-hatted little men rising in the clear mountain

  air.

  “There’s a vast disconnect between their world and ours, between our understanding and theirs,” Roldan said.

  “I’m not asking for magical powers,” I said. “I’d be happy if I knew where they were holding her.”

  “Ana was of an old family. They had property, a country farm, a city apartment.”

  “Near Cartagena?”

  He stooped, picked up another pebble, and tossed it far into the grass. “There’s no use thinking about it. There are only two of us. I no longer lead a cadre of armed revolutionaries.”

  In my hurry to dress and meet Cabrera, I hadn’t yet called Ignacio.

  I said, “Let’s see what I can do.”

  CHAPTER 35

  “I need to speak to Ignacio. It’s important.” Someone had opened the tiny window in the closet-like room, but there was no cooling breeze.

  “Who is this?”

  The voice belonged to the same woman who’d answered the phone days before. This time I wasn’t about to let her fob me off with any request that I call back later.

  “Look, I have to speak to him now, or at least leave a message, so he can call me back immediately. My name is Carlyle, and I need his help. I was given this number by a friend of his—”

  There was a noise as if the phone had fallen to the floor.

  “Hello?” I said. “Hello?”

  “Dammit, where are you? Where have you been?”

  “Sam?” I sat on the daybed. If it hadn’t been there, I’d probably have hit the floor; that’s how weak my knees felt. “Sam?”

  “Carlotta, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Your stuff’s still at the hotel— Where the hell are you? Have you found her?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Ignacio got in touch when you didn’t call. Then I talked to Gloria and—what the hell does it matter? I’m here in Bogota. Where are you?”