Body of Truth (51 page)

They finished their soup in silence, and the young man returned and took away their bowls. When he came back again he brought two plates, each with an ear of roasted com, slices of lime, slices of avocado, strips of grilled pork, and a mound of black beans mashed to the consistency of pate. And another plate of tortillas.

“
Dos cafecitos?
” he asked, and both Haydon and Janet nodded, and the young man quickly returned with two big cups of black coffee to which the sugar already had been added.

Haydon began to eat. He was so disconcerted by what the woman had told him on the balcony that he ignored Janet altogether. The G-2 had learned of their arrival in Cobán? How could that be? He went back over every step of his planning. The two diversionary couples. Janet hadn’t been out of his sight. The woman had said they had arrived in Cobán alone. Everything had worked…but the G-2 knew he was in Cobán. Neither Dolfo nor the other decoy couple knew where he and Janet were going, so even if the G-2 had resorted to their infamously persuasive questioning techniques, they couldn’t have given them away.

It hadn’t been his planning…it had been his inability to understand the depth of the duplicity with which he was dealing. Thinking back, the only place where either he or Janet had mentioned Cobán was in her house. He looked at her as she squeezed lime juice over her avocado. It was odd about women like her, it didn’t seem logical that such a woman was so constructed that one couldn’t even decipher whether she were incredibly oblivious or incredibly clever. But such was the case. He didn’t know whether Janet was being used or was herself designing. In either case, she was dangerous for him, and that had been abundantly emphasized only twenty minutes earlier when the woman on the balcony had warned him not to tell her of their communication.

Smoke from the cook fire outside in the courtyard seeped into the modest dining rooms, filling the still air with the tangy fragrance of oak. Outside the balcony windows the
chipichipi
was once again falling steadily, and a veil of fog drifted in with it, obscuring the red tile roofs along the streets below.

Haydon’s brooding had the same effect on Janet that it had on Nina, she sensed it and decided to leave him alone. They finished their meal in silence, and when the young Indian came to take away their plates, Haydon asked for another cup of coffee. Janet started to protest and then thought better of it and nodded in agreement.

It was the first of three cups they were to order over the course of the next two hours. Eventually everyone in the two dining rooms left, even the man and woman from the balcony, but the young Indian never asked them to pay and never came in to bother them at all except when Haydon turned to signal him for more coffee. Haydon didn’t know what he was supposed to expect, but he came to realize that this
comedor
was their safe house. They had to stay here until it was time…for whatever was going to happen.

At first Janet decided she was going to play Haydon’s game. She sat with him in silence, sipping the earthy Cobán coffee with its raw cane sugar and swinging her crossed leg impatiently, her eyes wandering about the two rooms, boredom quickly setting in. She lasted twenty minutes. She got up and started over to the balcony to look out, but Haydon stopped her. She knew why; she hadn’t thought. Embarrassed, she went to the door that opened onto the courtyard and stood there looking into the lush, glistening vegetation. Haydon watched her and listened to the parrots shriek sporadically on the railings above. But waiting in silence was against Janet’s nature, and she grew increasingly agitated. Finally she turned and stalked back to the table and picked up her purse, which was sitting in one of the chairs.

“This is bullshit,” she snapped. “I’m getting out of here.”

“Wait…” Haydon reached over and grabbed the strap of her purse.

Janet flared. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” She jerked the bag, but Haydon held on, stood and gripped her by the arm.

“You’re going to have to stay here, Janet,” his voice was steady, low. “It’s the only way I can be sure.”

“Sure of what?”

“That we’ll get in touch with Lena.”

She stared at him. “You don’t know that.”

“What’s your solution?”

“Get out there and let them know we’re here. What are we hiding in here for?”

“They said to come here.”

“They didn’t say to stay here, for Christ’s sake.”

“Don’t you think they’d let us know to do something else if that’s what they wanted?”

Janet fixed her eyes on him. “I’m getting the hell out of here,” she said, and an alarm bell went off in Haydon’s head, something about the tone of her voice, as if she thought she had stretched her luck as far as it could go, as if something was overdue.

The footsteps were sudden and loud on the wooden floor, and Haydon turned reflexively to see the woman from the balcony enter the room with three men, all of them carrying the snub-nosed little Uzi’s, their hair and clothes soaked by the
chipichipi
.

“They’re getting signals from here,” the woman said as she stalked across the room and snatched Janet’s purse. “Get over there,” she said to Janet, nodding toward the wall behind Haydon. Her companions stationed themselves at the doors, one of them moving over near Janet. The woman slung her Uzi over her shoulder and emptied Janet’s purse onto the table. Working quickly, she went through everything, taking caps off lipstick, scraping out makeup from Janet’s compact, disassembling a decorative key-chain holder, examining a flacon of perfume, anything large enough to have pieces came apart.

When she had gone through everything, she stood abruptly.

“Where is it?”

Janet was dumbstruck and simply stared at her.

“Where is it?” the woman snapped.

Janet stared.

“Take off your clothes,” the woman said.

“Wait a minute,” Haydon said. “Who’s getting signals?”

The woman turned on him. “Cage is here.”

“Cage? I thought you said they were G-2.”

“They’re both here.”

Haydon was stunned. He turned to Janet. “What in the hell have you done?”

“We picked up his people shortly after I spoke to you on the balcony,” the woman said. “Five or six of them—that’s how many we’ve identified so far anyway, scattered around the plaza. And there’s a van parked on the north side of the cathedral. We think the receiver is a powerful one, set up inside the van.”

“You’ve seen Cage?” Haydon asked.

“No, not him,” the woman said. “Half an hour ago, everyone, all of them started migrating toward Zona 1. That’s here, and they’ve been working in this direction. We’re leaving, but we’ve got to find the device first.”

Haydon looked at Janet. “You carrying a transmitter?”

“Trans…transmitter?” Her face portrayed a calculating confusion. She was stalling, and it made Haydon’s stomach knot.

The woman walked over to Janet and slapped her hard with the back of her hand, then three more times: whap-whap-whap, and before Janet could react, the woman grabbed the top of her sundress with both hands and ripped it wide open all the way down to her waist. The woman’s left forearm shot up to Janet’s throat and pinned her against the wall while her right hand thrust inside the dress searching for the device. Janet couldn’t speak or breathe, and as her left hand came up reflexively in a futile motion of self-defense, the woman suddenly saw the oversized watch. She jerked her forearm off Janet’s throat and grabbed her wrist, unbuckling the watch as Janet slid to the floor. Walking back to the table, the woman used the butt of her Uzi to smash the watch face. Nothing. The woman turned on Janet again.

“Wait a minute,” Haydon said. “It’s not going to be anything small if it’s going to have any range at all.” He looked at the pieces of junk the woman had scattered on the table from Janet’s purse. Janet’s purse. He picked up the canvas bag and felt it. He tried to wad it, but it resisted, stiff on the sides. He turned the bag wrong-side out and saw that there was an inner lining. Finding a gap in the seam, he worked his finger under it and jerked hard, ripping out the lining and revealing a thin insert of material to which a complicated network of wafer thin transistors and batteries and antenna had been stitched. The entire purse was lined with a meshwork of sophisticated technology, making the bag a powerful one-piece transmitting device. This was not a simple toy.

He turned and looked at Janet, feeling stupid and confused and angry.

Janet ignored him, her eyes hidden behind her disarrayed hair as she sat against the wall trying to button the front of her dress and pulling her sweater together as she dabbed at her bloodied nose with the back of her wrist.

Haydon took out his handkerchief and stepped over to her and helped her up, giving her the handkerchief. She avoided his eyes. Haydon didn’t know which disturbed him more: her betrayal or his own naïveté. They might as well be back in Guatemala City again. Everyone was here. Their guerrilla escorts were clearly feeling the pressure.

CHAPTER 49

T
he woman stuffed the lining back into the purse and gave it to one of the men, who opened his shirt and flattened the bag next to his body, buttoned his shirt, and left through the adjoining dining room.

“What’s in yours?” the woman asked Haydon, indicating the flight bag.

“An Uzi, a handgun, some ammunition…”

“Give the Uzi and the handgun to him,” she said, gesturing to another of her companions. Haydon unzipped the bag and did as he was told. “You still have your automatic?”

Haydon opened his coat and showed it to her, stuck in his waistband.

“Good,” she said. “We can travel through three buildings without going outside, then we’ll have to be very careful.” She looked at Janet, who had gotten to her feet, wiping her nose with Haydon’s handkerchief. “If you do anything, he’ll cut your throat,” she said, tilting her head toward the third man, who had moved over close to Janet and who obviously was going to be in charge of her. “I am not going to risk my life—or theirs—for you. We don’t risk anything unless it’s worthwhile. Do you understand that?”

Janet nodded, accepting the pointed insult. But she shook her hair out of her face, her expression already reflecting a stubborn un-repentance.

Christ, Haydon thought. This had all the makings of a disaster.

The five of them left together, Haydon following the woman, Janet and her bodyguard behind him, and the second man covering their rear. They went out into the courtyard, turned left and entered a dark corridor with a stairway that doubled back above them. At the top landing they entered a door through a three-foot-thick wall that took them into the next building where they hurried to yet another balcony, fast-walking its length to enter another doorway. This time they traveled the length of a dim corridor that had doors on either side with numbers on them, a hotel or boarding house, Haydon guessed, and then down a double-back stairwell into a third corridor that led into a private home. The stucco-covered stone walls here smelled of old, mildewed plaster, and twice they had to go down two or three steps through narrow doorways since the house was built on a falling street. Once Haydon saw a dark face retreat around a door beyond the woman’s shoulder, but when they passed by the face was gone and the door was closed.

They had stayed to the inner corridors as much as possible, but now they had to exit the buildings and enter another courtyard. It was small and bare, splotched with puddles of gray water, and patrolled by three or four ill-tempered geese, their breasts stained with mud. A wheel-less Toyota pickup that looked as if it had tumbled down the side of a mountain rested on its axles near the high wooden gates that gave access to the street. Another truck, with wooden side panels and a tarpaulin strapped down over its sideboards, sat with its nose against the gates.

They were hustled across the muddy compound and ushered through an open door into a small room that was empty except for a couple of crude wooden benches sitting against the walls and a corner fireplace with a smoldering fire.

“We’ll be here a while,” the woman said. “You might as well sit down and get comfortable.”

Janet sat down immediately on one of the benches nearest the fireplace and wrapped her sweater tightly around her and folded her arms. Haydon sat opposite her so that he had a good view of the courtyard.

The woman and the other man disappeared through a doorway near Haydon, while Janet’s bodyguard sat on a creaky chair, resting his Uzi on his lap. He lighted a cigarette and offered one to Janet, who refused, and then to Haydon, who gratefully accepted, letting the man light it for him. As he inhaled smoke from the bitter Guatemalan cigarette, Haydon heard radio static coming through the doorway from another room.

He looked at Janet as he smoked, but she kept her gaze on the floor. Finally, feeling him looking at her, she turned her eyes to him, and he saw something there that made him think of a lost soul, not a tortured one, not one grieving for past deeds and lost opportunities and abandoned dreams, but one who cursed the condemnation, defiant and begrudging to the end.

“You don’t think I would understand if you explained it to me?” he asked.

“That’s not the point,” she said, turning her eyes to the fire. “I don’t give a damn whether you ‘understand’ or not.”

He smoked a moment, trying to see in her profile some hint of the complicated emotions she must be feeling.

“Do you love him that much?” he asked.

She said nothing. Haydon rested his head against the stucco wall and watched her. Her hair, already wiry from the humidity, was even more disheveled because of her encounter with the woman. Several of the buttons had been torn off her sundress, so she had to cover herself with the sweater, which also helped to ward off the damp chill. The sweater was smeared with pinkish stains from her nosebleed, and mud had splashed on the lower part of her sundress in their hurried flight through the buildings and across courtyards.

He finished his cigarette and ground it out on the floor as the bodyguard had done a few moments before him. Standing, he stepped over to Janet and reached out his hand.