The Cain File

by Max Tomlinson

  In a few short hours she’d be close to the equator once more. Life was more immediate down there and people lived closer to the ground, struggling just to survive. Kacha. Maggie’s mother, bless her soul. Maggie thought again about Tica, in a prison outside Quito. A girl she’d never met, sixteen years old, already faced with the worst life had to offer. But a symbol for something bigger.

  And then there was Beltran. And Comrade Cain of Cosecha Severa—Grim Harvest.

  OK, so she was uneasy, too. But what was that phrase that kept coming up?

  A milk run. That was it.

  A yellow cab pulled up on Valencia outside her apartment building and double parked. A man in a turban hopped out and came jogging up to her front door in orange sneakers.

  Maggie drew the blinds, grabbed her bag, locked the office, set the alarm, engaged the two deadbolts to her apartment. There hadn’t been time to get the lock changed. When she got back. Hopefully, Seb had truly lost the key. She’d been ignoring his texts. And would continue to do so. She was leaving her phone behind.

  On the way downstairs she knocked on Señora Rosario’s door.

  Slippered feet shuffled up on the other side of the door. “Sí?”

  “It’s only me,” Maggie whispered in Spanish.

  “Is that pendejo Sebastian bothering you again, Magdalena?”

  “Not today,” Maggie said. “Just wanted to let you know I’ll be off for a few days again. So if you see any moving men leaving with all my possessions, you’ll know something is up.”

  “Ai. Be careful.”

  “I will. Thanks for keeping an eye out.”

  “You know it. Go with God.”

  “You too,” Maggie said.

  In the cab the driver—the man posing as a cab driver—handed Maggie a sealed envelope over the seat without looking back as he negotiated the Mission’s already crowded streets and got onto 101 South. Inside the envelope, Maggie found a coach ticket to Bogotá, a U.S. passport under the alias of Alice Mendes, a Commerce Oil company badge for same, and a stack of used U.S. currency and a smaller one of Colombian pesos. Ecuador used U.S. currency, so she was fine if she wound up there.

  The cabbie didn’t look at her in the rearview mirror, didn’t say a word, didn’t collect a fare. He dropped her off at SFO’s international terminal and left as quietly as he came.

  ~~~

  “What do you mean you’re out of vodka, sweetheart?” Maggie heard John Rae say to the flight attendant a few rows up from her in the packed 777. “Isn’t this an international flight?”

  She sat in the last row where she enjoyed the constant stream of passengers using the airplane lavatory. The middle-aged flight attendant behind the trolley cast a frown down at John Rae, sitting in an aisle seat. Her heavily sprayed blonde coif moved in one section when she did that. “An international flight in coach,” she said.

  “Got anything with alcohol in it?” John Rae said.

  “At nine in the morning?”

  “Just give me what the pilots are drinking for breakfast.”

  The attendant clanked bottles as she checked her supplies. “I have Jim Beam.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so, darlin’?” Maggie saw John Rae hold up two fingers. “Better make it a double. Might be my last chance until Bogotá.”

  “Enjoy your deregulated breakfast in a bag, hotdog.” The flight attendant tossed a bag of peanuts at John Rae after setting him up with liquor. He caught the nuts on the fly and flipped them over to his other hand.

  John Rae was playing the good old boy again, pretending to be the kind of guy who chugged RC Cola and ate moon pies. His hair was back under a black ball cap. He wore light-tinted sunglasses and needed a shave. All of this helped tone down his Anglo characteristics. Once through customs, the two of them would look like a couple of hipster vagabonds off on a South American adventure. Maggie found herself studying the line to John Rae’s jaw from her aisle seat. He looked like Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise. And he knew it.

  The toilet flushed through the wall behind her with a whoosh of suction. Ambience. But traveling coach was low profile. So much for Jayne Bond.

  Out the oval window morning skies shimmered over the Gulf of Mexico.

  A backup plan, she thought. Never leave home without it. Belt and suspenders. The heart of an accountant.

  Maggie got up from her seat, worked her way up to John Rae’s row, where he was sipping his drink. He looked up at her, caught her sly smile.

  She gave him a wicked wink, nodded imperceptibly back to where the bathrooms were. John Rae’s brief stare confirmed that he understood. Then he went back to his drinking.

  Maggie headed back to one of the two toilets, let herself in. Locked the door. Waited. Leaning back against the sink. Picked a piece of lint off her jeans. Finally, she heard a light knock on the lavatory door.

  “Avon calling,” John Rae whispered.

  She reached over, unlatched the door.

  John Rae let himself through the accordion-style door, squeezed in, shut it, locked it. Turned to face Maggie. He was wearing a beat-up pigskin jacket. “I never would have taken you for the Mile High Club, Maggie.”

  “In your dreams.”

  John Rae shrugged. “Story of my life.”

  “Spare me.”

  “I’m glad you made contact. I was planning on doing the same. I need to talk to you. Before we land.”

  “OK,” she said. “What about?”

  “That emergency contact number? Should have been in your little packet from Sinclair?”

  She recited the number back to him.

  “Not just a pretty face. But it’s too bad you wasted your time learning it.”

  “Really? And why is that?”

  “Because if something does go wrong, Maggie, on this op, which it won’t, but if it does, then you’re to hightail it out of town. Pure and simple. No heroics this time. Get out of Denver, baby, go. No looking back. Just get out anyway you can. No calling anybody, not even an emergency contact. Got that? Vamoose. That goat-truck thing you pulled in Ecuador? Gives me the confidence knowing you can do an encore. But you won’t. Just go to the airport, buy a ticket, come back. No fussing around. Do I make myself clear?”

  She blinked in mild confusion. “Yes, but the instructions clearly say to call . . .”

  John Rae shook his head. “This piddly little op, which amounts to paying off some terruco so a dirty Ecuadorian oil minister gets to live another day, isn’t worth worrying about if we hit a snag. Which we won’t. I already feel iffy about you coming along, but you insisted, so if anything does go wrong—which it won’t—you are to promise me that you’ll turn around, make like a banana, and split. OK?”

  “No. Because the instructions are to call that 866 number.”

  “Look, I’m a big fan of what I say goes. And it’s telling me this. So I’m telling you.”

  Maggie nodded. “So that’s how you do it in the big leagues. Bail at the first snag.”

  “Just promise me. I have my reasons.”

  “Reasons that boil down to you treating me like your kid sister.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Once the op starts, it’s Johnny’s way,” he said, pointing to his chest. “Am I in charge or not?”

  “You know, I actually think Sinclair Michaels is.”

  John Rae fanned that away. “Oh, sure. But Sincs is sitting on his derriere, sipping a few fingers of Kentucky mash right now. I’ve done a shipload of these payoff runs and it won’t be an issue. But if it is, I don’t want you risking your neck. I say we bail if things get funny in any way, any way at all. Cool with you, chica? Did I say that right? Without sounding like a sexist pig?”

  “You’re being overprotective. Because I insisted on coming along. Because I’m a woman. You’re worried. That’s sweet. But that’s actually pretty sexist, too, you know.”

  “Well, you know what I say to that? Johnny’s way.”

  “Johnny’s way? Seriously? I can’t believe I’m having
this conversation with a grown man in an airplane lav.”

  “Something funny—run like a bunny.”

  “Wow. Sesame Street for field operatives. Are you expecting something funny to happen, Johnny?”

  “Jesus Christ in a hammock, Maggie, Haven’t you heard a word I’m saying? No. No, I’m not expecting anything but a clean payoff. But I don’t tell you how to move a zillion bucks around. You don’t tell me how to be a kick-ass field op.”

  “You’re a cowboy.”

  “Now you’re gettin’ it.”

  A pretty sweet cowboy, she thought. But still. Never mind. Business. There were a number of body parts touching. She couldn’t help but feel the heat coming off of him.

  John Rae raised his eyebrows. “I could have pushed back on you coming along, you know.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So just do it.”

  “If you say so,” she said.

  “Yeah, I do. I did. And now I feel better. When it all comes down to it, this is just government work, like delivering the mail. And there’s no need to get your knickers in a twist over something like that.”

  “I actually think the mail is pretty important.”

  “It is. But if the mail doesn’t show up today, it shows up tomorrow. Anyway, you promised me. So we’re good.”

  “OK, now let me tell you how we do it chez Maggie.” She produced a folded-up piece of paper between her two fingers, proffered it. “It’s called belt and suspenders.”

  John Rae gave a grin. “You’re wearing stockings and suspenders under those jeans?”

  “So sad.” She shook her head. “No, it’s my contact info on a site called Frenesi. Take it.”

  John Rae took the paper, opened it, read it.

  Then he looked up. “IceLady69?”

  “It’s a dating site,” she said. “A place to leave messages for each other as a last resort. You need to be a little creative with your handle, but I think you can actually do it. Pick a name. Sign up. Ping me. You got your phone with you, right?”

  “Until I toss it once we get to Bogotá and make the call to meet Comrade Cain.”

  “Sign up for the rip-off airplane Wi-Fi service, create a logon for Frenesi, ping IceLady69. Then get rid of that piece of paper. You can eat it. That’s the way they do it in the movies, huh?”

  “A fallback communication plan. I like it.”

  “As a last resort, Frenesi is where we can reach out if everything else is unavailable. And no one else will know about it.”

  “But it won’t come to that.”

  “A cakewalk,” she said.

  “Milk run,” John Rae reminded her.

  “It really is.”

  “And you’re just gonna split if something goes wrong, right? Which it won’t.”

  “Yep,” Maggie said. “So what’s your screen name gonna be? Give me an idea, so I won’t be talking to some perv.”

  “MadDog.”

  “Not bad,” she said. “But probably taken. You might have to play around with it some.”

  “What’s MadDog in Spanish?”

  “Perro rabioso.”

  “That sounds like ‘rabid dog’.”

  “Well, it kind of is. But if the shoe fits . . .”

  John Rae pocketed the paper. “You’re a natural, Maggie.”

  The plane bounced, major turbulence, throwing John Rae against her, mashing her back onto the metal sink, and John Rae onto her. It was quick, but memorable. They straightened back up quickly, brushing themselves off, looking away. The intercom crackled, the captain instructing passengers to return to their seats and fasten their seatbelts.

  The plane jostled again.

  “Where were we?” John Rae said, giving her a direct smile.

  “You’re going to set up that Frenesi account.” Maggie winked. “See you in Bogotá. By the taxi stand.”

  John Rae smiled. “IceLady69?”

  “Later, Mad Doggie,” Maggie shuffled around John Rae without touching him too much, which wasn’t a hundred percent possible, then let herself out of the airplane restroom.

  The big-hair flight attendant was coming down the aisle, checking seatbelts, looking left and right. She noticed Maggie exiting the lav, then John Rae behind her. She frowned, then shook her head.

  Maggie smiled to herself as she found her seat, sat down, buckled herself in.

  As if. . .

  -14-

  “Alice Mendes?” the Colombian passport-control agent said, looking Maggie in the eye.

  “That would be me,” Maggie said, meeting his gaze.

  The agent was about forty, fine-skinned, with an angular face and mean eyes. He wore a khaki uniform shirt with little red epaulets and a chunky watch that would probably be good to thirty fathoms if it hadn’t been a knockoff. He reeked of strong tobacco. But the time he was taking, studying Maggie’s forged passport, said something wasn’t right.

  In the Plexiglas passport-control booth next to her, in front of the yellow line where the other disembarked passengers waited not so patiently, Maggie heard the female agent continue to grill John Rae about the reason for his visit to Colombia. She had asked four questions so far. But John Rae was staying cool. Vacation, he had said—and business, adding that little lilt that seemed to work with the ladies. Maybe she could show him around Bogotá. When did she get off work anyway?

  The agent scanning Maggie’s passport didn’t look up.“¿Cuánto tiempo te quedas en Bogotá?” he asked her. Rude bastard was using the familiar tú form. Talking down to her. Maybe it was a trick.

  “No ha-blow es-pan-yol,” Maggie said in a nasal twang. “English.”

  He looked up, puckering his lips. A Latina who didn’t speak the language. What good was she? Besides the obvious. He squinted at her breasts in her tight red turtleneck, then rubbed a long thumbnail over the corner of her passport photograph. Maggie wasn’t too worried about that. The passport was made by Agency techs, so it was probably better than an original. She’d studied the passport herself thoroughly on the flight down, memorizing her new temporary persona. The document had perfect wear and tear, smudged stamps that spanned the years, trips to England, France. Authentic-looking.

  The agent worked his nail under the corner of her earnest-looking photo. Behind the yellow line on the floor, tired passengers gave heavy sighs. Children whined. John Rae stood at relative ease, asking the female agent about a good place to have dinner in Bogotá. She wasn’t taking the bait.

  Several pairs of feet came clomping up to the far side of John Rae’s passport station.

  Maggie tilted her head a notch and glimpsed, out of the corner of her eye, three people standing around John Rae. Without lifting her head, she saw two pair of black lace-up boots, uniform pants, and a pair of gray slacks ending in shiny pointed black loafers with buckles.

  The agent in front of her peeled the corner of her photo up.

  “Please don’t do that,” Maggie said to him.

  He looked up, eyes narrowed, mouth tightened. A woman telling him what to do. Some jumped-up Ladina from the U.S., thinking her shit didn’t stink.

  “Me gustaría lamerte todo,” he whispered between his nicotine-stained teeth.

  So he’d like to lick her all over. Classy. If it was a test, she wasn’t going to fall for it. She looked back in mock confusion. “I’m sorry? What did you say? Something important?”

  He ignored her, flipping pages in her passport hard enough to pull one seam loose.

  Next to her she heard the man in gray speak to John Rae in English. “Come with us, please, sir.”

  “Why?” John Rae said. “Is something wrong?”

  “Just a formality. This way.”

  Maggie turned her head slightly, saw the man in the gray suit more clearly. He had a thick mustache.

  “Whatever for?” John Rae said. “What have I done?”

  “Just a few questions, sir.”

  “But I want to know what this is about,” John Rae said. “I have an important meet
ing downtown. My associates from Brila Chemical are waiting for me.”

  “Just come with us, sir,” the man said.

  “Why don’t you give them a call?” John Rae reached in his pocket, got his cell phone. “I’ve got the number plugged in right here . . .”

  “What are you doing?” the man in gray said.

  “Just texting my associate,” John Rae said, quickly punching in keys, hitting enter. “Let him know I might be a few minutes late. Even though there’s not going to be much of a delay, right?”

  “Stop!” The man in the suit snapped as one of the uniforms slapped a hand on John Rae’s arm. The phone flew out of John Rae’s hand and hit the tiled floor, spinning.

  John Rae lurched forward and stepped on the phone in a reasonable display of nervousness, crushing the device flat with a crunch of plastic and electronics.

  “Now look what you made me do!” he said. “I just got that. 4G LTE and everything.”

  “You did that on purpose.”

  “I most certainly did not. Cost a frickin’ bundle, I can tell you.”

  “Be quiet.”

  There was a clack as the other uniform, a chunky young woman with a solid figure and glistening black hair rolled in a tight bun, readied a small machine gun.

  “OK, OK,” John Rae said, raising his hands halfway. “Hold your horses, guys and girls. Let’s just go straighten this out, then.” He gave Maggie a quick what-the-hell look, almost indiscernible.

  Maggie took a deep breath, which filled her beating chest like a drum. The woman with the machine gun caught her glance, stared furiously back, nodding for Maggie to mind her own business. Maggie looked away, fought another breath down into her lungs. She heard someone in line behind her say “Look. They’re taking that man away.”