Heart of the World

by Linda Barnes

  A cloud hid the sliver of moon. I waited for its faint light to return before advancing from the first to the second rung. At the top, Roldan extended a hand to help me over the narrow cresting that rimmed the roof. Between us, we hauled the ladder up and carried it across to the roof of the next building. It was an easy journey, even with the ladder; no gap between the two flat roofs. Too easy, I thought.

  Dangling the ladder over the cresting and planting its cloth-swaddled feet onto the balcony of the third-floor apartment below made up for it. My hands were damp with sweat. If the ladder slipped, it was over. If we made too much noise, it was over.

  “We come from above,” Roldan whispered, “like the helicopter.”

  Descending first, I went to work on the lock. The turncoat at the farmhouse had sworn the third floor was empty, a buffer zone, an armory where no one slept. Soon, I’d find out if he’d lied.

  I was having trouble seeing the lock. Ignacio had come up with two pairs of old Nighthawk goggles, but they were heavy, and awkward; I’d voted against them. Roldan aimed the beam of a tiny flashlight at the doorjamb.

  The hard thing about locks is time. As I crouched on the third-floor balcony, not quite in full view of the street due to the crosshatched grating, the plants, and the vines, it stood still. I loided one lock. The next one resisted; my fingers ached for the familiar steel of my own picks. Finally, giving up on subtlety, I sliced a circle in the door with the cutter and laid a fold of cloth across it, the same cloth we’d used to swaddle the legs of the ladder. Then I tapped Roldan’s shoulder and raised a fist to my mouth. He lifted his cell phone, punched numbers, hung up. We waited three long minutes for the hired musicians to return.

  The landlady’s first name was Dolores, and I could hear them call to her, laughing and strumming. They began the serenade with a mournful love song, and I gave the circle a sharp light punch. Shards of glass tinkled to the ground like thunder.

  Sticking my shielded hand through the hole, I flipped the reluctant lever. I sprayed the track of the sliding door with lubricant. Roldan eased it open. The musicians played.

  The memory of the creaky floors in the apartment next door held me momentarily motionless. I raised a hand and pointed at my chest to indicate that I’d go first. I was lighter than Roldan; he was to follow in my footsteps. I edged over to the left-hand wall: creaky floors creak less if you stick closely to the wall.

  I’d seen Roldan walk the narrowest of suspension bridges. His balance was as good as mine was, if not better. I moved slowly and as he echoed my steps, I hoped the landlady was hanging out her doorway along with her drunken son, enjoying the serenade. I hoped the inhabitants of the second-floor flat were listening to the music from their front balcony, inhaling the fragrant night air instead of paying attention to sounds overhead.

  A song ended with a flourish and another began with a lilting guitar. From the building across the street, a man’s voice called out, asking how much he’d need to pay the band to go away and leave him in peace, but it was a good-natured voice, low and cheerful. One song seemed endless; another ended as soon as it began. Time, in the long hallway, expanded and contracted while I carefully positioned my feet. In five minutes or five hours, Roldan and I progressed to the room over the back bedroom, and I muttered a prayer that the rear windowboxes would be precisely the same design, that they would hold, that Paolina was awake in the room beneath us, alerted by the notes of “Teddy Bears’ Picnic.”

  Lift the hook from the eye; ease the window open; lean into the still hot air. I edged onto the sill, and the floor held. I backed out and Roldan uncoiled the rope around his waist. He entered the tiny box while I waited in the bedroom. I was the better locksmith, but Rafael knew knots. I could only hope Roldan knew them as well. I felt calm and strong. I didn’t know how much of that to attribute to the coca and how much to the relief of finally doing something, taking action after too much planning, too much waiting.

  Sam was all right; Roldan wouldn’t lie about that. The musicians joked and sang. I listened in vain for the rhythmic tap of a hand against a chair. Roldan backed out, nodded me inside the box.

  The vines grew more thickly on this grating; I had to shove them aside in order to plant my feet on the crossbars, clamber out and over the top of the enclosure. There was a moment of panic before Roldan shoved the end of the rope into my hand. The grating felt adequate; the knotted rope strong. I braced my feet against the rough stucco of the exterior wall, but my left hand refused to release the rope.

  I knew I had to do it, had to move, but my balance seemed precarious, both feet planted, both arms taut. If I slipped I’d be hanging into darkness like a spider on a silken thread. I wished I’d done more rock climbing, played less volleyball, and then I was scrabbling down the side of the building, aware that underneath, the target was small, the opening narrow. If I fell or somehow missed the second-floor windowbox…

  There: the top railing, solid underfoot. I shifted and swung inward. When my weight settled on the foundation of the windowbox, I gave the rope two strong tugs, the signal for Rafael—for Roldan, to descend.

  “Don’t let go of the rope,” I murmured when he was close enough to hear. He nodded. Whether the windowbox would hold our combined weights was doubtful.

  “You made the calls?” I whispered.

  He nodded. That was the setup; the strolling musicians were only the first of the night’s distractions. Felicia, on his signal, would call the police; Rafael, the ambulance service; Ignacio, the fire department. I shifted my full concentration to the window, but I couldn’t see past the heavy shade. Its dark edges were taped to the window frame.

  “Break it,” Roldan urged.

  I shook my head. We were banking on surprise, surprise and the hope that the girl was alone, her guards lured away by a coerced message from their colleagues who’d followed the wrong duo from San Felipe. I wiped my palms on my pants, and pulled the narrow strip of celluloid from my fanny pack while Roldan’s gun materialized in his hand. I felt like I might suffocate, with the vines twining so closely in the hot still air and my heart pounding. I slipped the ‘loid through the gap between the casing and lifted the iron hook. It moved easily, but if I shoved the window ajar, the shade would fall with a racket.

  Roldan eased a folding knife into my waiting right hand. Carefully I thumbed the catch. The eight-inch blade slid easily through the casing and I sliced the shade, center, top right, top left. Then I handed the closed knife to Paolina’s father and sucked in a deep breath.

  I pushed hard. The moment the windows parted, I had my foot over the sill. The room was dark as the inside of a mine. I lifted my other leg, stepped inside, felt Roldan surge into the room behind me, a noiseless shadow.

  And then I was blinded by light.

  CHAPTER 40

  The flashbeam was blinding as a beacon. I squinted against the glare, fighting the urge to close my eyes, knowing if I did I might never reopen them.

  “Bravo.” The slow clapping seemed to issue from a single pair of hands. “You did well with the ladder. I could barely hear you. And such splendid music for diversion, too. The whole effect, very nicely done.”

  Paolina, five feet away, bound to a chair, stared at me in disbelief, as though I were a ghost likely to vanish. Her hair was disheveled, tangled and dirty, yanked back by the cloth that gagged her. Her face was pale and her eyes enormous. Deep scratches running from her right shoulder down the length of her arm made me catch my lip between my teeth to keep from crying out, and I thought, I’ll kill the scum who did that.

  So focused was my gaze she might have been alone in the room. Then the lens widened to include the body of a woman. She lay on the floor near Paolina’s chair, her long braid bloody, her ear clotted with blood. A youngish man, the original of the photo Greg Hanson had given me in Miami, blocked the doorway to the hall. He cradled a leveled rifle. The barrel swung restlessly to cover both Roldan and me.

  The source of the sardonic applause sat in a
throne-like rattan armchair, Miami tan intact, skull shaved. I’d seen him only once before in the flesh, lying on a chaise in a gold wallpapered study. If invisible lightning connected my eyes with Paolina’s, a bolt of equal intensity ran from Roldan to the man I knew as Drew Naylor.

  Roldan didn’t call him Naylor. He called him Angel, with the hissing g of the Spanish pronunciation, and if Roldan was taken aback by his “dead” friend’s presence, he didn’t show it. Maybe he’d seen Angel Navas, alive, in the Kogi dreamworld, in Aluna.

  As for me, I’d examined the photos accompanying Luisa Cabrera’s articles, the ones her devoted uncle had pasted in his scrapbook, searching for an image of the first Senora Navas, the woman, Ana, captioned photos that identified her by name. I’d come across several photos of Navas instead; I’d studied them, recalling Hanson’s words about the shape of eye sockets, the distance between eyes, the things that don’t change despite plastic surgery.

  Why? Because Roldan kept mentioning the limping man. Because Roldan had been presumed dead, but was still alive.

  I thought: Firefighters on the way, police cars, ambulances. I thought: Stall. Had Ignacio’s time estimates been realistic?

  “I can’t say I like your face better this way, Angel.” Roldan, utterly calm, leveled his automatic as though it were an extension of his hand. A slender wooden cane leaned against the chair near Naylor’s left hand. His right held a Sig-Sauer “American,” a nine-shot cannon.

  “Do I have to say what will occur if you don’t drop the weapon immediately?” Angel’s voice was even and cool, and I wondered how I could have mistaken his accent for anything other than Colombian. At his curt nod, the young man’s rifle swiveled and Paolina closed her eyes, anticipating the shot.

  “Roldan!” I said urgently.

  His gun clattered to the floor.

  “You, too.” Angel nodded at me. “Slowly!”

  The Beretta hit the floor like a stone.

  “Kick it here. The other one as well. Thank you.”

  Could we keep Angel talking till the street and the apartment exploded with sirens and ladders and firemen? I glanced at Roldan, and the set mask of his face frightened me.

  “You knew he’d be here?” I said.

  “You told me.”

  “How?”

  “With his name. Drew Naylor. Drew is Andrew, no? A.N. The same intitials as my old friend. And more, the name Naylor.”

  I shook my head.

  “El Martillo, the name they call me, it means the Hammer.”

  The nail, I thought.

  “The limping man,” I said.

  Roldan’s smile made Ignacio’s savage grin seem tame. “I never thought my old friend died in jail.”

  “And I returned the compliment.” Angel’s chin dipped in a nod. “I never thought you died in the crash.”

  “He was jailed for life. He died in prison.” I kept my eyes on Roldan, hoping he’d communicate, hoping he had some plan beyond determining whether or not it was our night to die.

  Roldan said, “That’s the story your government gave, the one they leaked to mine. But think about it: Angel knew where the coca fields were. He knew which of your government officials were crooked. He had access to more money than you can count.”

  Paolina sat frozen in her chair, eyes alert. My ears yearned for sirens.

  “You think your country’s so incorruptible?” Roldan said. “It’s just us banana republics that reek of evil? The profit is so vast; why should it surprise you that millions could corrupt anyone? This futile war on drugs has killed more people, put more people in prison. It’s killing justice itself.”

  “Bravo, again,” Angel said. “Such passion. Roldan thinks buying cocaine should be as easy as buying soda pop.”

  “I think it should all be legal: alcohol, cocaine, even heroin. That doesn’t mean I want it for myself, or think it’s good for others. Legalize and regulate. Why not? Look at history. Look at Prohibition, the lawlessness that only receded after the law was changed. The only difference now is it affects the whole world, Afghanistan to Peru.”

  Where were the goddamn firemen?

  Angel said, “Any time’s a good time for politics, no? We had famous arguments, Roldan, before you turned into a son of a bitch.”

  “Is Ana dead?” Roldan asked abruptly.

  “What do you care? Another bitch.”

  Paolina’s pupils shifted from Ana’s body to me, there and back again, as though she was trying to speak with her frightened eyes.

  Angel said, “You could never trust her with children. She tried to help the girl and forgot her loyalty. You two shared the same kind of loyalty. When it came to the heart, you went your own ways. You deserted your friends.”

  Paolina could use her legs, upend her chair. If shots were fired, I needed her on the floor. I was trying so hard to communicate that message, and listening so hard for approaching sirens, it took me a while to realize the band had stopped playing.

  I spoke to blunt the silence. “You’re saying Naylor—Angel—made a deal with DEA?” What was it Vandenburg had said the first time I’d questioned him? Don’t bother threatening Naylor with DEA.

  Angel said, “Why deal with institutions when you can deal with individuals?”

  A single corrupt senior DEA operative, someone with money and access, could have convinced a prison warden that the government wanted to make the secret deal. Could have placed the man in the federal Witness Protection Program. It could have been a ring of corrupt officials, eager to make quick, dirty money.

  “He’d cooperate with the devil himself if it would get me killed,” Roldan said.

  “Or jailed for life.” Naylor smiled. “ADX Florence, you know it? The super-max prison in Colorado, where the Unabomber lives? You two can have long political chats.”

  Angel Navas hadn’t disappeared into small-town Idaho. He’d lived high in L.A. and Miami. Had he come into contact with Mark Bracken while pinpointing the location of coca fields slated for destruction? Was he a legitimate DEA asset as well as a rogue?

  “Now that you’ve got Roldan,” I said into silence, “you can let the girl go.”

  “Ask the mystic whether they let my wife and son go free.”

  I didn’t need to ask; his wife and son had died.

  “We have the gold,” I said. “We can deal.” The woman was lying on her side, her spine to me, her face to Paolina. Paolina’s index finger moved in a yank-the-trigger motion. Could the woman be alive in spite of the pooling blood?

  Angel said, “I don’t give a shit for the gold.”

  “The gold was Bracken’s idea?”

  I studied the blood on the woman’s scalp. Possibly her weapon was visible, accessible, closer than the guns I’d kicked to the man I’d known as Naylor.

  “I spoke of it casually at first. I led him to it with tales of hidden cities and exotic treasure. I used BrackenCorp to collect what I wanted: my friend, Roldan, and those he cares for. What is gold compared to vengeance?”

  Roldan spoke. “How did you know I was alive?”

  “I sat in the Yankee prison, bastard, and I dreamed of you. I sat there long enough to break the habit of the drug, and I thought only of you. News of you, bastard, alive or dead, was worth good money. I had time and I spent money. The government, the army, the DAS has nothing like my dossier, because the secret police never knew you the way I did. They never cared about finding you the way I did. After I made my deal and came out, I focused on you. I heard tales of the mystic on the mountain.”

  “You used the gold as bait,” I said.

  Angel nodded. “My friends would break the law for treasure, not to hunt down my old friend.”

  “You didn’t know for certain till you saw the film from the second helicopter, the one that got away,” Roldan said.

  “El Martillo to the rescue. And it wasn’t till my DEA friends scared your lawyer, Vandenburg, into cooperating, that I got the best news: Your child was living in the States.”


  “Bracken will still want the gold.” I tried edging an inch forward as I spoke.

  “You’re so eager to have Jorge shoot you? The gold is nothing to me. I’ve decided not to go back to the U.S., so what do I care? This plastic surgery is a good thing, but even more, being in Colombia is a good thing. They need me here, Roldan.”

  The fire department could have driven here from Bogota by now. The cops could have scaled the building twice. Roldan hadn’t given the signal; I was sure of it. I longed for Sam, but I was grateful he was safe, glad he wasn’t part of this. My mouth was so dry, I could hardly keep talking.

  I said, “You were working with Vandenburg, so you knew about me all along.”

  “Yes, I enjoyed our little game. Roldan, you know, she blushed when she confessed she was the mother of your unborn child? She was so determined to find you, I thought I might as well let her help. You were lucky; you were absent from the camp. Then I got lucky; when the little one escaped, we recovered her.”

  “Luisa’s dead,” Roldan said.

  Angel shrugged. “Almost everyone I knew from that time is dead.”

  “You remember her uncle, Gilberto?”

  “Is he dead, too?”

  “When we brought Luisa’s body home, he asked me to turn myself in, but I told him the army would shoot me on sight.”

  Angel smiled. “At San Felipe tomorrow, a captain would have been allowed to shoot you while you were escaping. I told him not to count on it; I had faith you’d come here to Ana, especially when someone tried to lure my troops away. The captain will be disappointed.”

  “Did you know Senor Cabrera is now Minister of Justice?” Roldan’s tone was conversational. “He assured me he has an independent group, a highly trained cadre untainted by paramilitaries, unswayed by politics, left or right.”