Betrayed (20 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Well, she’d certainly chalked up a civics lesson, if nothing useful. Vicki spent the next hour working her way down the street, showing Holly’s picture to store clerks, dropping coins in beggars’ cups,  knocking on doors, before giving up and returning to the taxi, whose driver had been happy enough for another fifty quetzal to settle down to his own siesta. No wonder the local police had thrown in the towel, Vicki thought despondently as the taxi dropped her off at the children’s home. Nobody sees anything, hears anything, or knows anything.

A messenger from the mortuary was waiting for her at Casa de Esperanza. Vicki didn’t bother opening the carefully wrapped box before signing for it. If its contents were randomly scooped from someone’s fireplace, she’d never know anyway.

She blocked her mind to the lightness of weight as she carried the box up to her quarters and set it carefully with the belongings she was readying to bring with Joe and Bill in the morning. How was it possible that this small cardboard receptacle held all that was left of what had been a living, breathing human being?

Forcing her thoughts back to the task at hand, Vicki dialed up the local Internet connection. As it downloaded her e-mail, she browsed through some Google searches. Checking data was second nature to Vicki, and Lynn had thrown some new curves at her.
It can’t be true! We’re the good guys!

But Lynn had her facts correct enough. UFCO, Arbenz, the CIA’s 1954 coup—it was all public record. As were the decades of brutal military repression that followed. So brutal that those ten brief years of reform were referenced in everything Vicki read as though the so-named ‘ten years of spring’ were the only positive note in Guatemalan history.
So what were we doing  arming and training these guys?

And not just in Guatemala. Vicki was astonished to read that the same Dulles brothers had engineered a similar coup just a year earlier in Iran, where a democratically elected president had threatened to redirect oil revenues to modernize his own medieval state. While the oil companies recovered their monopoly, the Iranians got Shah Reza Pahlavi. Then there was El Salvador, the Philippines, Chile, Argentina, Iraq, the pattern depressingly similar. In Iran, of course, that intervention had backfired badly, with the oppressiveness of the Shah and his American-trained SAVAK secret police giving rise to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution and its legacy of hatred for which the US and entire Western world were still paying.

We were fighting communism, and they were our allies. Maybe they weren’t always the best. But by making a stand, we did create the freest and richest society on earth
.

At least for ourselves
.

Vicki propped up the group photo she’d recovered from the archives. Had her birth father known the American advisors shown here? Or had he simply been making an extra commission for the news service? Vicki studied the turned figure in civilian clothing and floppy hat. Had he really been deliberately trying to keep his face out of the picture?
Are you really CIA?

The only good news was waiting on her e-mail. Vicki immediately set off to find Evelyn.

The elderly missionary was in the CE thrift store, a former salon set up Goodwill-style with clothing and other items donated by the expat community. With her was Adriana, the local volunteer who’d replaced Vicki at the dump school. Adriana was sorting through racks of children’s clothing, while Evelyn was picking through the infant supplies with a young Mayan woman carrying a baby.

Evelyn looked up as Vicki approached, and as she saw Vicki’s face, she straightened. “You’ve heard.”

 Vicki ended the suspense quickly. “The proposal was approved. You got the grant.” She threw an arm around Evelyn’s shoulders, touched and astonished to see tears pouring down the woman’s cheeks. “What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy about it?”

“Oh, no, no! Nothing’s wrong. It is all
so
right!” She hugged Vicki fiercely. “Here it was your father Jeff and my dear Victoria who first made this place possible. And now it is so fitting that their daughter, my sweet little Vicki grown up, is making it possible for this to go on no matter what should become of me. Thank You, heavenly Father above. Thank You for bringing my little Vicki back to be such a blessing to me."

 “Hey, don’t be thanking some heavenly Father above—or me,” Vicki said lightly, pulling away, uncomfortable at the accolades. “Thank the foundation. They’re the ones with the cash.”

Vicki regretted her levity as she caught sorrow in Evelyn’s eyes. She corrected herself, “It’s just . . . you’re the one who’s been trying to save all these kids on your own, and it’s about time you caught a break. I’m glad for anything I could do to help.”

“Oh, Vicki.” Evelyn sighed.

As though adding her own protest, the baby Evelyn had been outfitting when Vicki burst in set up a wail. The teenaged mother loosed the carrying blanket from her back so she could comfort the child in her arms. The baby was adorable with silky, dark hair and plump cheeks, its rounded, brown limbs flailing vigorously.

“You do remember Carmen and little Maritza?” Evelyn prompted.

“Of course,” Vicki said. “I just wouldn’t have recognized them.”

Maritza and her mother had been released from the clinic forty-eight hours after Vicki had brought them in. Vicki knew Evelyn had made arrangements for their convalescence, but she hadn’t seen the pair in the last two and a half weeks.

“One of the mission organizations has a home for street girls and their babies. A lot of them don’t stay long—especially since they allow no drugs. But Carmen here has settled in well and is volunteering with the nursery.”

“
Hola
, Carmen.” Vicki shifted to Spanish with a smile. “It’s good to see you again. Maritza is looking very beautiful.”

Now that eyes were on her, Carmen drifted close enough to snatch Vicki’s hand, the black eyes that had been so dull with despair now passionate with gratitude. “
Que Dios le bendiga
. ‘May God bless you,’” she answered fervently before bursting into a flood of her own language.

“She is thanking you for saving Maritza’s life and her own,” Evelyn translated, then added with gentle implacability, “Don’t downplay how our heavenly Father uses His own human children to work in His world, Vicki. After all, you too are a part of the beauty of God’s creation. You questioned how a loving Creator can see what’s happening in His world and do nothing about it. But if you asked Carmen, she’d say He did do something. He sent you to her and her child. You see, He never asked you or me to fix the whole world, just to—”

“I know. I’ve got it now,” Vicki interrupted. “Do what is right. Do not give way to fear.”

“Don’t you laugh at it. Because when enough ordinary people choose to do just that, then you’ll see change in this world and not before. And when more people don’t do it than do—well, that’s what gets you the kind of world we’re looking at. I’m happy doing what God’s called me to do and leaving the rest to Him.”

The kindness in Evelyn’s keen hazel gaze leavened the reproof, and Vicki impulsively threw her arms around her again. “And you just keep on saving the world, Evelyn. I’m happy to help, even if it isn’t really much—” She stopped as a glint of light across the room caught her eye. Slowly, she lowered her arms and straightened.

As Adriana reached for a girls’ rack, Vicki spotted a dainty gold chain around her neck with a beautifully crafted jaguar hanging from it, the eyes a green gleam of emerald chips. For a long heartbeat, then another, Vicki couldn’t breathe. Then she crossed the floor in two long strides. “Where did you get that?”

At the harsh Spanish, the volunteer took a step back. Vicki reminded herself that Adriana hadn’t even been at the school compound when Holly’s broken body was brought there. Yet the pendant had to be Holly’s, its handcrafted design too unique for coincidence.

“I’m sorry. It’s just—my sister, Holly, was wearing that necklace when she died. At least it looks like the same one. Could you tell me how it came to you?”

Like all the volunteers, Adriana knew of Holly’s death. She unfastened the chain from her neck. “Oh, please, then you must take it. I purchased the chain today from one of the
basurero
children. For only a fraction, I am sure, of its value, though of course it cannot be real gold. Not if he found it as he says in the
basura
.”

“Thank you. If you don’t mind, I will take it because it is a precious memory for me of my sister. But you must let me reimburse you for what you gave the child.”

After Adriana reluctantly admitted what she’d spent, Vicki went on to her most urgent query. “Would you be able to take me to the child who had the pendant? I’d like to talk to him about where he found it.”

“You should know him. Pepito, just down the path from the school. His mother would not let him come to classes, if you remember.”

Pepito didn’t look happy to see Adriana and Vicki when they made their way down the muddy path to where his scrap-wood shack clung to the side of the ravine. No, he wasn’t in trouble, they had to reassure him and his mother before he would talk about the pendant.

“I found it out there.” He indicated a direction far afield from where Holly had been found.

 “That isn’t possible,” Vicki probed gently but firmly. “My sister was wearing it when we carried her up to the school.”

Pepito wouldn’t back down. “It was there. I am not lying. It was a miracle from God.”

Vicki knelt to look the boy straight in the eyes. “What do you mean? What was a miracle?”

“You will not believe me,” Pepito answered.

“Try me.” Vicki produced a twenty-quetzal note.

Pepito’s face lit up. Snatching the money, he said eagerly, “It dropped from the sky when I prayed. I swear, it was not there, and then it was. As though it came from the very hand of God.”

The sky!

Vicki’s thoughts leaped to Holly’s broken form on the garbage mound. The shiny black plastic in which she’d been encased. As clean and untouched, Vicki had puzzled over, as though it had dropped from the sky.

“You see! You do not believe me.” The sullen look was back on Pepito’s face.

Vicki straightened, her voice ringing with conviction as she gave him a pat on the head. “Oh no, I believe you. I believe you absolutely."

Chapter Sixteen

“You’re late.”

Vicki skidded to a halt on the tarmac as a long body separated itself from the fuselage of the single-engine plane.

Joe had reverted to his surfer look. He wore Bermuda shorts, despite the coolness of the highland morning, and a dizzyingly bright Hawaiian shirt. His hair tumbled to his broad shoulders. Nor was there any hint of the sympathy that had warmed Vicki toward him at the funeral. His  eyes swept over Vicki’s face. “And what is this I hear you’re not making the return trip?”

So that was why the sympathy had vanished. Men hated having their advice ignored, even if it was none of their business.

Vicki gritted her teeth. What had started out as a good morning was already turning into an ordeal. She’d made her good-byes to the Casa de Esperanza staff, the affection of their hugs chasing away some of the heart chill of Holly’s death. An e-mail from Children at Risk’s home office offering condolences and congratulations had also extended her available leave by two weeks. Adriana’s announcement that Pepito’s mother was going to let the boy attend classes was an added gratification.

Then the late arrival of her radio taxi dropped Vicki into rush hour. A traffic jam involving a mule cart and garbage truck had been compounded by a line-up at airport security. Her duffel bag was heavier than usual, thanks to the coroner’s box, reinforced now with duct tape and padded with clothing, so that by the time Vicki had found the parking berth matching Joe’s directions, she was breathless and damp with perspiration. A definite disadvantage as she tipped back her head to glower at Joe.

“I have some vacation time coming, and WRC needs a translator,” Vicki answered coolly. “You’ve got a problem with that?”

“Hey, it’s your funeral.” The WRC handyman had the grace to catch himself. “Sorry! Poor choice of words. You do what you have to. If HQ says you’re welcome, it’s none of my business.”

“Precisely. As to schedule, I’m sorry I’m late. There was a traffic jam and a mule—” Vicki broke off. Why was she defending herself to this man? She let some of his sarcasm creep into her tone as she glanced around. “I hadn’t realized a one-passenger charter flight was on such a tight schedule. I mean, what’s the penalty? Dumping the passenger or firing the pilot for taking off a whole ten minutes late?”

“More like a fine.” Joe lifted Vicki’s duffel bag from her grasp. Ducking his head under the strut, he swung it effortlessly through an open side door.

From a distance the plane had looked tiny, its body boxlike with square-tipped wings, rather like a bumblebee compared to the sleek aerodynamics of the 727 loading passengers over at the terminal. But in this parking field among other private aircraft, it was big enough, the wings clearing Joe’s height by several feet. Through the open door Vicki could see a two person bench just behind the pilot and copilot seats. The rest of the cabin had been stripped for cargo, currently a stack of boxes and crates and one empty cage.

“We may not be on a tight schedule ourselves, but air traffic control still has to coordinate our takeoff with other flights.”

The lift-off just then of a two-engine Fairchild commuter jet bore out his rebuke. Vicki opened her mouth for a real apology when he said, “However, since I always play it safe, I factored in a woman’s tendency to run late. You’ve actually got fifteen minutes if you’d like to make use of the facilities. May I remind you, there are no restrooms aboard a DHC-2.”

The snapping shut of Vicki’s jaw cut off any conciliatory words. “I’ve flown on small planes before. And for your information, I am more punctual than any man I’ve worked with. It wasn’t my fault—”

At his low chuckle, Vicki spun around. Though she’d have liked to defy his advice, she had too much experience with small plane flight to pass up using the facilities before finding herself in a confined cabin a few thousand meters above the ground.

And though annoying Joe would be a pleasure, she also hurried to get back before the fifteen minutes were up. It wouldn’t do to repay Bill Taylor’s kindness by jeopardizing their take-off window.
It’s just a few hours. I can visit with Mr. Taylor and ignore surfer boy
.

When she returned to the DHC-2, the cargo door was shut and Joe was looking pointedly at his watch. His elderly employer was still nowhere in sight. “So where’s Bill Taylor? It looks like I’m not the only one running late.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Bill? I thought you knew. He headed home overland the day after the memorial service. No sense two people sitting around in this smog waiting for delivery.”

The glint in Joe’s eyes told Vicki he’d read her dismay. Perversely, he was courteous as he helped her into the copilot’s seat. Handing her a pack of mint chewing gum and an airsickness sack, he reached to start the engine.

“Planes this size don’t have pressurized cabins,” he informed Vicki as she fished for her seat belt. “The gum will help equalize the pressure in your ears. I’m sure you can guess what that’s for. We don’t fly above weather in this thing. We fly through it. I’ve got some Dramamine too if you need it.”

Vicki forbore reminding him this wasn’t her first small plane flight. Accepting his offerings, she swallowed a Dramamine, popping in a stick of chewing gum to wash it down.

His presence beside her was more of a problem. The pilot’s seat was too small for his bulk, so his long limbs brushed against hers as he adjusted controls, a faint but unambiguously masculine musk warm in her nostrils. Vicki wanted to scream with the claustrophobic closeness of the cabin. She dug in her carry-on for the paperback she’d tucked in for the flight.
Why couldn’t it be Michael I’m cramped with in here?

“You’re perfectly safe, you know,” an ironic drawl murmured above her ear. As Vicki’s head shot up, Joe patted the closest portion of the control panel. “She may be old, but the Beaver here is the best bush plane that was ever invented. This gal’s seen plenty of tough country, and she’ll get us through plenty more.”

“I’m not worried about—,” Vicki began.

Joe reached for the hand mike and in fluent Spanish read off his flight information to the air control tower. Then the half-circle of the throttle came back, and the plane taxied down the runway.

For all her boasted experience, Vicki held her breath as the wheels left the ground, chewing furiously at the gum while her eardrums popped and her stomach plunged in inverse proportion to the rising of the plane.

Since he’d delivered his directives, Joe had fallen silent to concentrate on his flying, which he seemed to be doing expertly enough in Vicki’s amateur judgment, so she was able to ignore his closeness, turning her attention to the landscape falling away below.

This was the same picturesque panorama that had greeted Vicki just two weeks earlier, but as the single engine of the DHC-2 beat its way upward to bank above a ridge, disappointment snatched away Vicki’s exhalation of pleasure.

She’d known what would be there. It was in her briefings. It had been there, though glossed over by the altitude, when she’d arrived.

As the small plane droned low enough that Vicki could make out the individual thatched houses and cobbled streets of villages clustered in the valleys, the rising folds of mountain ridges passing so close under the wheels of the plane it seemed they should collide, Vicki saw what her first appreciative survey had missed.

Landslides wiping away entire mountainsides where deforestation was too great to anchor the topsoil. Rivers visibly polluted from the waste of mining operations and sugar cane mills on their banks. Green ridges that became sparse patches of remaining forest interspersed with cornfields and coffee plantations. Clearings where the infertile soil had been had been surrendered back to weeds.

It was like a hideous canker eating everywhere at what had looked from a distance like endless green waves of a forest-cloaked mountain range.

“We’ll be about three hours in the air.” It was the first time Joe had glanced Vicki’s way since the wheels had left the ground. “That isn’t as the crow flies. Bill wants me to pass over the biosphere—check out  some reports we’ve been getting of unauthorized clearings. "Will you be okay that long?”

“Just don’t offer me any water.” Vicki summoned up a smile as her hand went to the window. “I didn’t realize it was so bad. I guess I understand Holly—and even fanatics like Dieter—a little better. I mean, people need to eat, but I didn’t see this much devastation even in India.”

“Yes, unfortunately, best estimates are that the last cloud forests may be gone within the decade unless something is done. That includes the natural reserves, if they don’t crack down on illegal invasion and poaching. Sad thing is, this kind of destruction doesn’t really help the peasants either, because the deforestation and landslides are destroying so much topsoil they have to keep moving on and clearing more.”

Joe banked to aim the plane between two peaks. “Of course it’s not just the peasants. Mining and lumber are destroying as much as slash-and-burn. And then there’s that.”

Vicki spotted a flash of red tucked into a valley tucked between the two peaks. “What is it?”

“Poppies. Heroin. The ‘cocaine’ of Guatemala.”

Vicki knew more than she cared to about the heroin trade after a project in Myanmar, formerly Burma, hub of the famed Asian Opium Triangle. Only too many of the children in that particular relief effort were already addicted to a cheap version of opium gum. She craned her neck for a better look. “Michael’s new Environmental Protection Unit has been involved in that.”

Joe’s eyebrows shot up. “ Really? I’ve seen that unit in action up around the center. They’re kinda hard to miss. I just hadn’t realized that was Camden’s show.”

Vicki thought she caught a derisive note under the neutral statement and bristled. “It isn’t. The Guatemalan forces are independent of any outside interference. Michael’s just been helping with some training exercises as . . . as an advisor.”

“And you got that from Camden, I’m sure.” Joe raised a hand in surrender. “Hey, I’ve got no beef with Camden. I’m all for what he’s doing. This country needs some serious environmental law enforcement—as long as it doesn’t trample all over people and their lives. Especially since poppy fields and land grabs are far from the worst problems out here.”

Joe pointed out a valley below where they’d glimpsed the poppies. A stream winding through it looked clear enough, but the vegetation along the banks was bleached yellow and patchy.

“The processing into heroin and cocaine is what’s killing these mountains—literally. The chemical runoff into these streams is a hundred times worse than the industrial pollution.”