Beneath a Panamanian Moon (11 page)

“He, I think, is very dangerous.”

“And Cooper?”

“He is good, but naïve, is what my sources tell me.” The younger man laughed and said, “They referred to him as a Boy Scout.”

Somewhere, a salsa band started up, forcing the younger man to speak louder. “What about the clerk? What do we do with the clerk?”

“Right. Yes. Vasquez.”

“You no longer trust him?”

“Kelly worries about his loyalty.”

“But didn't Vasquez recommend the piano player?”

“Yay-uh,” the Colonel said. “He did. That's something to watch.”

“So you green-light the clerk?”

“Yes, but after Vasquez, no more until the New Year. It was Winstead's death, remember, that we drew this attention.”

“That was sloppy, I admit.”

“And the other boy with the shark. I don't think anyone believed it was an accident.”

“We intended only to drown him, not feed the fish.”

“That is a comfort to his family, I'm sure.”

“The next will be better, I promise, cleaner,” the younger man said. “We will give you, how do the politicians describe it, ‘plausible deniability.'”

“The memory of those boys,” the Colonel said, his voice barely audible above the band's horn section, “keeps me awake at night.”

“It is the overenthusiasm of the men,” the younger man said. “You train them to be ruthless too well.”

“I see those boys everywhere,” the Colonel said, “even in my dreams. That is, when I can sleep.”

“Have your new pet, this piano player, play you a lullaby, Señor Pepe. While you sleep, my men will locate and dispose of this spy.”

“And if it's the piano player?”

“His music will not protect him, señor.”

“I don't know. Maybe he's just here to play the piano,” the Colonel said sadly.

“Maybe,” the younger man said. “In the meantime, give him to Kelly.”

The Colonel laughed.

“You see a joke in this?”

“Give him to Kelly. I just remembered the first time I saw a cow fall into a river of piranha.”

The younger man snorted in agreement. They both thought it was funnier than I did.

“But maybe there is no spy,” the Colonel said.

“There is a spy. My contacts are never wrong.”

“Then why can't they tell us who it is?” The Colonel was frustrated.

“Because this is being played outside of normal channels.”

“Goddamn it to hell!” This shout was accompanied by a loud bang, and I pictured the Colonel's fist smacking the table. The Colonel's voice dropped to a whisper. “In the old days we didn't have Americans spying on our operations, not unless it was Hoover, the blackmailing son of a bitch, and his butt boy, Tolson. But today, it's not enough we keep the reporters with their goddamn safari suits and lip gloss contained. Now we have agencies cobbled together by Congress, DOD, Justice, hell, anytime you get three people together for lunch in that town, one of them's goddamn intel.”

The Colonel stopped and I wondered why. He had been on such a rant I wondered if maybe he'd popped an artery. Then I heard the waitress ask if they wanted another round and the foreign man said yes.

When she left the foreign man said, “That is one fine beauty there. It is a waste that she is not waiting for me in my bed.”

“Can we get back to business?”

“It must be awful to be old,” the young man said. His voice was so clear that I knew the microphone must have been planted very close. That meant someone had been watching them, and noticing their habits. This wasn't a chance pickup or surveillance with a shotgun mic.

“Remember, Colonel, your plan depends on everything going smoothly at the New Year's Eve party.” The younger man stressed “your plan.” “We've laid out all of the clues, everything that would lead them to all the right conclusions. That is the genius of this operation. That is your genius, sir.”

“It wasn't my plan alone,” the older man said.

“Oh, sir, please. Do not be the modest person.” The second man said something else, something neither the microphone nor the Colonel picked up.

“What did you say?”

“I said that we need more money.”

“It was just a matter of time. Like Laos.”

“Like Laos,” agreed the younger man. “So our clients will move more product, we get more money, it is an easy thing, right?”

“I don't want to know about it,” the Colonel said. “It all seems so sordid, somehow. But if you think it's right, just do it.”

“Before New Year's.”

“Yes, before New Year's.”

The recording ended and I sat for a moment on the edge of my single bed, suddenly cold. The recording had come from Smith, I knew, but how and when did he get this? And who recorded it? And the bigger question was, How long would it be before the Colonel and this younger man had me fingered? And what about Ramirez? So far he hadn't impressed me with his dedication to covering anything but his bar tab.

A knock interrupted my wallow and Cooper stuck his head in the door. “Come on, man, we have to go.” He looked at my shorts and said, “Christ, Harper, you think you're running through the damn country club? Put on some long pants or these jungle bugs will eat you alive.”

A few minutes later I stood in the driveway, as ready for the run as I'd ever be. Cooper stretched and Ramirez smoked. Ramirez dropped his cigarette, stepped on it, and without a word started a quick but lumbering jog toward the treeline, hunched over like the Bambino running bases. Cooper followed, and I followed Cooper.

Cooper ran easily, all long-legged strides that were graceful and easy, as if he could do this all day. Where Cooper was a loping giraffe, Ramirez was a rhinoceros, crashing through the brush.

I ran more like a three-legged dog. I could get where I wanted to go, but it wasn't fast and it wasn't pretty and it wasn't anything you wanted to watch for too long except out of a twisted sense of wonder. At first it wasn't too bad. The running trail was clear, and beautiful. Flowers added their fragrance to the path. Monkeys chattered in the trees. Birds offered their song. It was an easy jog through paradise.

An hour later my legs ached, my throat was raw with inhaled pollen, I had a pain between my ribs like molten steel, and the goddamn birds wouldn't stop shrieking. “Christ … Jesus,” I wheezed. “Can't … we … stop?”

“The enemy eats those who stop,” Ramirez said.

“What enemy?”

“He'll show,” he said, “and you better be ready.” He and Cooper picked up the pace and I limped after them. After a few miles I'd exhausted my vocabulary of obscenities and was forced to start all over with variations on the “ass” theme. About the time I'd hit the
P
s, I found them stopped in a small clearing. Both men were sweating, I was happy to see, but neither had succumbed to a coronary.

“I told you he'd catch up,” Cooper said.

“Yeah,” Ramirez said, “but look at him. He looks like he's about to pass out.”

“He's here, that says something.”

“Yeah, it says he's scared of getting lost.”

I put my hands on my knees and tried not to throw up. Then I sat down and figured I'd quietly die here and let the army ants have me. It was a pleasant thought, my molecules feeding an egg-laying queen, making babies by the millions. My ribs heaved as I tried to get enough oxygen to my brain to figure out how to levitate my ass back home.

“Come on, we got a full day ahead of us and a lot of land to cover.”

“I thought for sure we'd be at the fucking North Pole by now.”

“Tierra del Fuego,” Cooper said, looking up past the branches toward the sun. “We've been running south.”

“I should have been a dentist,” I said.

After resting for a few minutes, we were back on our feet. I was too tired to push away the vines and branches. I just focused on the backs of the two men running in front of me. I couldn't let them get away because I swore that if I ever caught up with them, I would kill them. Just the thought of it kept me pounding down the shadows, chasing the two men who were always a few steps in front of me, always out of reach.

It was shortly before breakfast when we came out of the jungle and onto the beach, where I fell on my back, knees up, arms out, ready for my maker to take me home.

“They want us at class at oh nine hundred hours,” Cooper said. “We've got fifteen minutes.”

“What class?”

“Security class. They're teaching the security students how to use antipersonnel mines,” Cooper said.

“So they can use them against all the tourists storming the beach,” Ramirez grumbled. “Jesus, if it weren't for the money, I'd go home and sleep for a few years.”

“The money is good,” said Cooper. “I just want enough to go back to law school. What about you?”

Ramirez spit in the sand. “I'm spending all mine on hookers and beer.”

And the money was good. Damn good for living at the beach. And I was about to run into another good thing about working at La Boca. She was twenty-four, blond, and inexplicably fond of piano players.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I went through the lobby and hit the stairs. I stopped midway and listened. Someone was playing the piano. One. Note. At. A. Time. A woman sang Eartha Kitt's “Santa Baby,” but the only words she knew were the title.

“‘Santa baby,'” she sang, and played the melody with one finger until the lyrics came back around to “Santa baby” again.

I went into the dining room and there, near the French doors, stood a young woman with hair the color of movie sunlight. She wore a swimsuit bottom and a white button shirt tied just below her breasts. One knee was propped on the piano stool and a flip-flop dangled from her toe.

“There are more words to that song, you know. And if you play three notes at once, you get what's called a chord,” I said. “It's all the rage.”

She looked up, startled, and she was so beautiful I thought I'd stroked out on the trail and was still lying in the dirt, surrounded by lower primates, hallucinating. And it was okay. In fact, it was better than okay.

“You must be the piano player,” she said.

“Word gets around.”

“You know how I can tell?”

“How?”

“You're pale. Don't they have sunlight where you come from?”

“Not at night. In December.”

She went back to playing each note. “When did you get in?”

“Yesterday.”

“So this piano is your responsibility now.”

“I'm barely responsible for myself.”

She smiled and said, “Do you always smell like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like an alcoholic warthog three days dead in the sun.”

“Most days I crawl into the shade.” I wiped the sweat from my face with my shirttail and said, “You must be the man's daughter.”

She held out her hand. “I am the man's daughter. My name's Kris.”

“Hi, I'm—”

“John Harper, I know.” She lowered her eyes and her lashes fell against her cheeks. I'm a sucker for that. “I've been looking forward to meeting you. We don't get many music lovers around here. Especially such cute ones.”

Flattery. I'm a sucker for that, too. I put on my finest smile.

“Can you really play this thing?”

“A little,” I said.

“Could you teach me?”

“It would be a pleasure.”

“Right now?” She sat down and slid over on the bench to give me room.

I heard men gathering in the lobby. “I can't right now. But maybe later?”

“I'll be waiting,” she said, and I floated up the steps.

*   *   *

I was the last one to class, my hair wet and my clothes damp. When I sat next to Cooper he said, “Who smells like a flower?”

The class was held outside on the edge of a firing range chopped out of the jungle. Cooper, Ramirez, and I were the only Anglos. Sitting on the far side of the bleachers, in their own group, were half a dozen very intense Latinos. One of them quietly translated as the instructor, an Aryan with a ranger haircut, high and tight, stood in the shade and introduced himself.

“Gentlemen, my name is Melvin Short, but most of the staff here know me as Glory Hog. You might wonder why. So, to save us all time I will explain. It's because of this.” He held up a battered
Newsweek
magazine. On the cover was a ranger, his face striped in green and black for combat. It was our instructor, Melvin. “Now, you may call me Mr. Short, or G, or even Hog, but the only person who calls me Melvin is your girlfriend when I bone her, and I do bone her on a regular basis. Is that clear?”

The Latinos did not laugh.

“I'm glad to have new blood to laugh at my material. Welcome aboard, gentlemen. I understand you're familiar with weapons so I may call on you to help me demonstrate for the class, is that all right?”

We nodded. I added a “Yes, sir,” out of a habit instilled in me by an insistent young captain and the sole of his boot.

Hog put the
Newsweek
aside, put his hands behind his back, and addressed the Latinos, pausing as the translator repeated each sentence in Spanish. “We will learn only defense here as you have been chosen to protect your bosses at home, not to pursue the bad guy in the field. Considering the brief amount of time you'll be here, that is a good thing because the enemy in the bush is a bad hombre and would eat your heart out.” Hog waited for the translation. “Sending you amateurs up against the FARC is like sending Girl Scouts up against the Oakland Raiders in the friggin' Super Bowl.”

The translator translated and a few in the audience shifted on their haunches and grumbled. They weren't happy being compared to a bunch of Girl Scouts.

Hog ignored them and picked up a gray tray the size and shape of a small frozen dinner. “This, gentlemen, is a Claymore antipersonnel mine. It is a nasty little item filled with steel balls, seven hundred of them, all about the size of a nine-millimeter bullet. They shred flesh, right down to the bare bloody bone of anything unfortunate enough to be caught in its kill zone. Now, have any of you used Claymores before?”