The Cain File

by Max Tomlinson

  He took a deep breath as he tried to focus on the truck directly in front belching fumes. “I’m worried my fellow conference attendees might see us. I have to give a talk at eleven this morning, you see.”

  But he obviously wasn’t that worried. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. And he had taken foolish risks. Picking up a street hooker in one of the iffier cities in Latin America. He hadn’t even asked for a price.

  “Maybe we should just say adiós, then,” she said. “What a shame. I was in the mood to get to know you better. Loosen you up for your conference. Oh well. Can you stop here, please?” Maggie reached for the door handle.

  “Wait!” He chewed his lip as he blinked rapidly behind his glasses. “You think it will be okay? Going through the hotel lobby, I mean?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The car reeled into the grand Plaza de la Independencia, its neat white classical government buildings softened by tall palms in the elegant square. At the other end of the plaza stood an Indian woman wearing a fedora, with a baby slung over her back in a blanket similar to the one Maggie’s laptop was in. She was hawking brightly colored shawls out of a cardboard box.

  “Pull over there,” Maggie said.

  “Why?” he said nervously.

  “Just pull over.”

  He stopped at the curb. Maggie rolled the window down, caught the woman’s attention. “Something not too garish,” she said.

  The woman adjusted the baby on her back as she searched her box and produced a smart-looking gray-and-black hound’s-tooth checked shawl. She held up the neatly folded wrap, letting it unfurl with a bit of panache. The finest polyester China could produce.

  “Buenazo,” Maggie said. “I’ll take it.”

  The woman’s mouth parted in surprise. Maggie wasn’t even going to haggle. “Five dollars?”

  Maggie took the garment, turned to her new beau. “I need five dollars.”

  He looked taken aback, but produced a ten-dollar bill quickly enough. Maggie handed it to the woman. “Keep the change.” They set off, Maggie modeling her new shawl.

  “Better?” she said. “A little more grown up? For your hotel lobby?”

  “Yes!” He gave an unctuous smile as he pushed his glasses up his shiny pug nose. They headed over a hill into downtown traffic. “You know, you don’t seem like a local.”

  “Is that what you want? A local girl? An Indian girl?” She ran a finger up his plump thigh. “One who is grateful? One who will do anything? I am grateful. You’ll see.”

  He gulped as he drove, his hands shaking visibly as they gripped the wheel. “What’s your name?”

  “Suwa.”

  “What a beautiful name! It’s Indian, is it?”

  “Yes.” It was also the Quechua word for thief.

  “Indian girls are beautiful.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said. “And what’s your name?”

  “Ulfric.”

  “Ulfric,” Maggie said, pronouncing it carefully. “Such a strong name.”

  “Umm . . . we haven’t discussed . . .” He couldn’t seem to finish his sentence.

  “Discussed what, Ulfric?”

  “Um . . . how much . . .”

  She sat back, wrapping the shawl around her coyly. “What do you think I am—some girl who does these things for money? I’m just desperate to buy food for my brothers and sisters. I only ask that if you are pleased with me, that, when we are done, when you are satisfied, of course, that you give me a gift. Forty dollars.”

  “Forty?” His voice rose. “Isn’t that a lot of money down here?”

  “It’s not that much.”

  “Twenty.” He nodded as he drove. “Twenty is plenty. Don’t try to take advantage of my good nature.”

  “Twenty, then. Whatever you have.” Twenty was just the start.

  He cleared his throat and drove. “Indian girls are beautiful.”

  “Yes we are,” she said. “And we’ll do anything.”

  Anything.

  ~~~

  “What a view,” Maggie said. Ecuador’s long narrow capital stretched out from the hotel window, stories below.

  “I have to give a talk in less than two hours,” Ulfric said, his voice still quivering.

  Maggie turned from the window. Ulfric, her German, or whatever he was, stood by the table in his corporate cookie-cutter hotel room. His laptop was out on the table, binders were open, pages of notes scribbled over in red were scattered here and there.

  “I thought you could hop in the tub,” Maggie said. “Hmm?”

  “But my talk. We need to hurry.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be quick.” She peeled off her wrap, threw it on the back of the chair. “But not too quick, eh?” Then she pulled off her sequined T-shirt slowly and languorously, revealing her firm torso in lacy black bra. “I’m going to have you nice and unperturbed for your lecture.”

  “How do you know a word like . . .” He pushed his glasses up his nose again as if to get a better look. Her breasts caught his eyes like magnets.

  “How about a drink?” she said.

  “A drink?” A little screech in his voice. “It’s not even ten in the morning. Tea. I’ll have tea. It’s over there.”

  “Tea, then,” she said, noting the coffee maker and materials on the nightstand by his bed. She also saw some questionable reading material: a shiny paperback with a teenage girl on the cover in bra and panties. A hotel bottle of hand lotion and a box of paper tissues sat next to it. “I’ll make you some tea while you get in the tub,” she said, kicking off her black Keds and peeling off her blue jeans. Down to her underwear, she grabbed the coffee pot, darted into the bathroom, turned on the taps to the Jacuzzi bathtub. She filled the pot partway with water from the sink and dimmed the bathroom lights on her way out.

  Ulfric stood puffing as he watched her make tea. He was probably wondering how an Indian girl got hold of such classy underwear, she thought. At least her lingerie seemed to be occupying his thoughts. “Sugar. I like plenty of sugar.”

  “Go on! Into the tub with you. I’ll bring it in.”

  “Right,” he said, turning like a robot and heading into the bathroom. “Right.” The door shut behind him. She heard him sneeze.

  Maggie removed the filter from the coffee maker and fired it up, making hot water. She heard Ulfric getting into the bathtub, splashing. He started humming a German tune.

  She made a paper cup of tea and while it seeped, she tapped quietly on the keyboard to Ulfric’s laptop. His screensaver appeared and prompted her for a password. She picked up the cell phone lying on the table. It required a security gesture to get in. She set it down quietly, retrieved the packet she had gotten from Kacha from her jeans. She opened the paper slowly, so as not to touch or spill any of the white powder. There was perhaps a half-teaspoon. A lot, it seemed.

  “Suwa?” Ulfric said in a theatrical whisper from the bathroom. “It’s getting late!”

  She dumped all of the Devil’s Breath into the cup and stirred it with a plastic spoon. She added two packs of sugar, mixed that in too.

  She pushed open the bathroom door with her foot and entered.

  He was sitting in the tub, naked, his glasses off, looking at her with his mouth agape. His clothes lay in a pile on the floor. She held up the spiked tea.

  “Plenty of sugar,” she said. “You’ll need your energy.” She winked.

  “Ja,” he said, pawing at her leg with a wet mitt. “Come here!” He swiped at her breast as she bent over to put the cup down next to him. She had to maneuver so she didn’t spill any tea.

  “Hey! Go easy, Ulfric.”

  “Indian girls have big ones.”

  “Drink your tea.”

  He picked up his cup, toasted her, giving her an evil little grin. “Skol!”

  “Come on,” she said, picking up a bar of soap, unwrapping it, as she sat on the rim of the tub. “I suspect you need a bit of a rubdown.”

  “Yes.” Laughing like a schoolboy, he gul
ped tea. “Rub me down like a good girl.”

  She stood up. “I’m just going next door to slip out of my underwear. I don’t want to get them wet. Any wetter than they already are, hey?” She gave him an evil glint.

  “Hurry back!” he said, slurping his tea. “I’m really excited, you know.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  She went into the bedroom, shut the door, picked up her jeans and T-shirt, and dressed quietly.

  ~~~

  “Messtechnik?” Maggie said, sitting at Ulfric’s laptop. “And how do I spell that?

  “M-e-s-s-t-e-c-h-n-i-k.” Ulfric stood in the middle of the hotel room wearing nothing but a towel, dripping on the carpet, rubbing his bulging white stomach absent-mindedly as he stared at the wall with wide, unfocused eyes.

  Maggie typed the recited letters into the password field of his laptop and was granted access. The desktop screen showed a mousey Asian woman with a forced smile, partially hidden behind two overweight preteen Nordic boys. So Ulfric had a mail-order bride. She probably doubled as his maid, nanny, cook, and whatever else he demanded.

  Maggie fired up the email program. “Same password for email, Ulfric?”

  “Messtechnik,” he repeated in a monotone, blinking at the wall.

  Maggie typed in the password, waited for his email to connect and download.

  From Ulfric’s email account, Maggie fired off an email to a clandestine account Ed had set up, giving him Ulfric’s cell number and the phrase: the next time you think you have power and influence, try ordering someone else’s dog around. It was one of Ed’s favorite quotes and he would know who had sent the email. She hit Send, then went to Ulfric’s Sent Items folder, where she deleted the sent copy of the email, for whatever security was in it.

  Ulfric stood staring at the wall in his towel.

  “Ulfric,” Maggie said. “I have a few more questions for you.”

  “Yes?”

  Within minutes Maggie had access to Ulfric’s cell phone and hotel safe. Soon she had four hundred euros, several hundred U.S. dollars—the base currency in Ecuador—and a German passport. “Ulfric, where’s your wallet?”

  “Under the mattress.”

  The wallet contained seven dollars, an ATM card, and several credit cards. Another jackpot.

  She left Ulfric the seven dollars and slid the wallet back under the mattress.

  While she waited for Ed to call, Maggie nudged Ulfric over to the bed where she sat him down like a stoned Teddy Bear and continued to question him. Eyes open wide, twiddling his pudgy toes, he answered like a dutiful child, one with a German accent. She jotted down his pin and access numbers on a pad of hotel notepaper.

  She turned on the TV, found Canal 13, the Quito station. “Las Noticias” was on, the breaking news, a serious man in a tie with a microphone standing in front of the U.S. Embassy she had sailed by not a few hours ago. A collection of police cars flashed behind him. “Police are on the lookup for a young woman, wearing jeans and a purple T-shirt, and an American man with fair hair.”

  Reasonable identikits of her and John Rae appeared.

  “The two are wanted in connection to a shooting at an event last night in Guapalo. The woman is believed to be the same one who tried to run the barricades this morning at the U.S. embassy, resulting in the death of her driver. She is considered armed and dangerous.”

  Maggie wished she were armed. And she hadn’t run any barricades.

  She switched to TeleAmazonias, the national station. Students were marching in Guayaquil, protesting the agreement with the Chinese to continue oil exploration in the Amazon. Footage showed bulldozers cutting a road of rust-red dirt through pristine rainforest, natives demonstrating there as well. In their painted faces, bare torsos, and native dress, they looked vulnerable and undermanned. Maggie was reminded of Kacha’s cousin, Tica, under arrest somewhere. The red dust blew around the ankles of the demonstrators in swirls. Without the ancient growth to keep it in place, the precious Amazon was blowing away. Maggie shook her head.

  But there was nothing on the national news of a runaway Indian girl in jeans and purple T-shirt, wanted for causing havoc in Quito. Yet.

  Ulfric’s cell phone rang.

  Maggie answered. “Did you order a pizza?”

  “What the hell is going on, Maggs?” Ed Linden said.

  Street noise in the background. Ed was calling away from the office. Playing it safe.

  “I’d sure like to know,” Maggie said.

  “I thought I said to steer clear of the embassy.”

  “Well, that’s not what the driver thought. How did he know the check passphrase?”

  “We don’t have a profile on him yet. The local police won’t let us near. He wasn’t one of us. And whoever he was, he’s dead.”

  “Yes, I know.” She had never been responsible for the death of another human. She could argue it was in self-defense, but it didn’t make her feel any better.

  “The guy who was supposed to pick you up just missed you.”

  “Minister Beltran thought he could get over on us, Ed. He stopped the arrest. Who alerted him?”

  There was a pause while traffic honked in San Francisco. “All good questions.”

  “Sounds like we got a mole.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who else knew about the passphrase?”

  “The usual channels. But we’ll have to deal with that later. Right now, there’s an alert out for you. Everybody and anybody is searching.”

  “What about John Rae?”

  “He made it out.”

  “The guy is good.”

  “He’s a field op. That’s what he’s paid to do. Unlike you. I was nuts to let you go on that.”

  “I badgered the hell out of you,” she said. “I wanted to play op.” Truth was, she needed to switch her career path in order to survive in the Agency. “Where is John Rae?”

  “We don’t know exactly where. Yet. But he’ll be fine. I’m not worried about John Rae. He’s not my department. You are.”

  “I’ve accessed some funds. A German passport. I can try to find someone, get it cobbled. With a U.S. visa. But it might take a day or two. I’ll use the name Melanie Kirsch. Can you get me papers and a flight to the States?”

  “No, it’s too hot there. Get out of Quito. Get out of Ecuador. Can you get to Lima?”

  “Peru?”

  “I have a person there in the embassy I trust implicitly.”

  “Less than a thousand miles,” she said. “OK. Next stop, Lima.”

  “He’ll get you to the U.S.,” Ed said, puffing on a cigarette. “Email contact info when you get there. Leave now. And I mean now. Stay off the main roads.”

  “OK,” she said. “Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck. Leave.” Ed hung up.

  Maggie steered Ulfric into the bathroom.

  She slung her MacBook over her shoulder in the smelly blue lliq blanket, gathered up Ulfric’s credit cards and pile of cash, the list of pin numbers and access codes, and nabbed the keys to Ulfric’s rental car on her way out the door. She left the passport. She wouldn’t need it. But she took his phone, since there was a call from Ed on it. She’d dump it in the trash somewhere. She headed out into the hall, pulled the door shut.

  Down the hall the elevator dinged. Two men in suits appeared and marched her way—Ulfric’s business associates no doubt, wondering where he had gotten to. He was supposed to give some talk. Well, it was going to be an incoherent one now. Maggie kept her head down as the men passed, one man’s eyes hard upon her. She pushed open a stairwell door, stealing a glance before she entered.

  The other man knocked on the door. “Ulfric? Are you there? We’re waiting for you downstairs. I hope you haven’t forgotten about your presentation.”

  Maggie entered the stairwell and took the stairs two at a time. In the parking garage, she located Ulfric’s white Ford Fiesta wedged up against a cement wall, blocked in by a grey sedan on the left. The only way out was a narrow
L of space behind her to her left. A hunter-green Jag was nosed in to her rear, on the other side of the L. She’d have to reverse out, cut it tight. She eyed the clearance. Not much. But the Ford was a compact and she could make it. Maybe.

  Unlocking the car, she squeezed herself in, inadvertently dinging the gray sedan. She threw her laptop in its blanket onto the passenger seat and wrapped the shawl around her shoulders, so she didn’t look like such a hussy. Fumbling the electronic key into the slot, she started up the Fiesta with a rattle and whine.

  She put the car into first, tapped the car’s bumper in front. Hand on the wheel, she turned in her seat, gauging the room between her and the Jag again. Like getting ten pounds of potatoes into a five-pound bag. Someone was going to get a bit of a repair bill.

  “Excuse me?” A voice echoed through the garage in heavily accented English. A rapid clip of heels followed and she saw the tall dark-skinned attendant who had parked Ulfric’s car when they arrived an hour ago, running up, his tie flapping. He stopped in the space behind her.

  “Let me do it, please!” But his smile disappeared when he saw that the driver was not the German guest he obviously expected, but the young woman the man had snuck into the hotel. “Yes?” His eyes narrowed as he scanned Maggie’s face. “This is not your car?”

  “I’m Herr Müller’s secretary,” she said in English, smiling wonderfully. “He needs overhead transparencies for his presentation.” She had a ten-dollar bill ready and held it up between her index and middle finger. “Can you move that Jag, please? Thank you so much.”

  The attendant smiled as he squeezed in and the bill disappeared into his pocket. Then a flicker of recognition crossed his face. “Wait! I know you. You’re the one on the news. The one wanted by the tombos. Stop the car. Get out. Now!”

  “Sorry, amigo. No hablo español.”

  “Don’t give me that!” he shouted in Spanish. “Out of the car!” He reached for the door handle.

  “Best get out of the way, cabrón.” She threw the little car into reverse as he pressed himself back against the gray sedan. She cut back around the L in an attempt to miss the Jaguar. Unsuccessful. The long scrape resonated through the garage as she left a pricy white graze along the driver’s side of the Jag, setting off a piercing auto alarm. Her tall attendant crouched down fearfully. Tires burning, she fought the little car out.