Red Jungle (18 page)

“I take breakfast early, Olga. And I eat very little. Toast and coffee. You’ll find everything in the kitchen,” he said quietly in Spanish. “We’ll see about you going back as soon as I speak to my aunt. Back home,” he said.

“Sí,
Don
Russell,” she said. He remembered her then; she’d been so much younger then that he hadn’t recognized her. Suddenly he remembered her very well, at the hotel in San Francisco, and the way his mother and she had cried over him.

He handed her the photo and walked out of the room.

Later, he called his aunt. She told him she had no idea how Olga had found him, or what had happened to Olga over the years. She said that during the war one of Olga’s children had turned out to be a Communist. Olga and her family had been driven off the plantation by the administrator because of it.

They’d met in Hangar 28 at Aurora airport. His boss was writing a series of articles on the state of the drug war in Latin America, and he’d moved his office out to the DEA’s hangar to be closer to the action.

The hangar had offices on the second floor that looked down on the cavernous ground floor. A DEA pilot had once caught fire by accident on the shop floor when he’d lit a cigarette, forgetting about the bucket of fuel nearby. Someone else from the DEA had jumped from his office during a meeting with Russell, who was then writing the
de rigueur
article on the drug war; they managed to put the man out. Russell remembered now how everyone for a moment had sat frozen and watched the man’s jacket go from black to orange. That was Guatemala out of the blue, something like that. The DEA officer broke his leg but managed to put the pilot out, although his hands were left terribly burnt.

The hangar door was partially open; Russell could see the lights from the airfield at night. The airport was busy at this time of night. A commercial jet and two private planes were queued up waiting to take off, out on the tarmac.

They heard the roar of the commercial jet as it started down the runway, the jet’s engines pouring out hot air.

“You’ve been away a lot the last few weeks,” Russell’s boss said to him. They looked at each other. The good thing about their office was that there was so much extracurricular activity that no one was beyond reproach. It made for a relaxed environment. Everyone seemed to be carrying on a double life of one kind or another. His boss—a drug addict—had his. Now, Russell had Beatrice.

“I know about your girlfriend,” his boss added. “I saw the two of you at the Q Bar the other night. So did a lot of people. You’re out of your mind, you know that. If her husband finds out, you’ll be killed. Normally it wouldn’t matter, but in his case, of course, it has to. If he found out, he might hold it against us—this office. You know these Guatemalans, he’s liable to kill us
all
. Only natural, don’t you think? The cuckold can be a mean race of people,” his boss said. “He’s killed a lot of people. A couple more wouldn’t matter.”

“Yes.” It was all Russell could say.

“If you promise to leave her alone, I could forget about it. It would have to stop immediately, though; otherwise I’m afraid it will all go off in an email to London. I would hate to lose you. I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”

“Yes. Thank you,” he said.

“Yes
what,
Price?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t want to go home right now. Not if I can be of help.” It was the first honest thing he’d said.

“Schmitt was writing an article about General Selva. I want you to finish it. It’s to run in next weekend’s series on the elections here.” Schmitt had been murdered in some kind of whorehouse out on the coast, Russell had heard.

“What kind of article are we talking about?” Russell asked

“Not sure, now. Schmitt didn’t like the general. I know that.”

“That’s it then?” he said. “It’s up to me to finish what Schmitt started?”

“No
. Just cover the general’s campaign. Boilerplate stuff. He’s not worth dying over. No more mention of his past human rights record. I don’t know about you, but I want to leave the country standing up. . . . So what did you decide about her? I like you, Price. You’re quiet. And I’ve always admired that in a journalist. I actually have confidence in you.”

His boss looked up from his laptop. For the first time Russell saw the man, and not the over-worked journalist with the drug problem. The man’s eyes were jaundiced; he was unshaven, and he was frightened. “I have children. Did you know that? In London, two, a boy and a girl,” he said. “That’s why I decided to have you cover the general, Price. Everyone else in the office has children. Do you understand? You can refuse, and we can drop it. We’ll say that Schmitt died in mysterious circumstances. We’ll let the murderers get away. We won’t really cover the election, not really, and no one will care anyway, as the general is slated to win. And
really,
who cares about what happens in this backwater? Everyone is interested in Iraq. So what’s it going to be? Her or the job?”

“The job,” Russell said.

“Are you lying? We can’t do both, write about the bloody little man, and have the man covering him playing titties and tummies with his wife. Wouldn’t be the right thing, would it?”

“No. Of course not,” Russell said.

“Good. Very strange, the power of beautiful women,” his boss said. “I’ve met her, Price. I understand. Extraordinary woman.” His boss started to type again, and Russell left.

For some reason, as he left the office, Russell remembered the pilot, the way the flames seemed to possess him like some kind of religious martyr. And really, that man had just been drunk when he lit a cigarette in a hangar where everywhere there were signs that said not to smoke.

Warnings were everywhere, but no one paid any attention to them. He certainly hadn’t. And now he too was on fire, albeit a different kind.

He went back to his office and turned on Schmitt’s computer. The screen saver came on. Schmitt hadn’t bothered with passwords. The computer screen showed a country lane somewhere in Maine, in the fall. There was text written on the pavement in white: “God grant me serenity and allow me to accept the things I cannot change,” it read.

His phone rang. It was Mahler, saying that Carl was going to Europe for a few days and was taking the things he’d bought from Russell with him to sell.

“How’s it going?” Russell asked. He looked at the beautiful picture on the screen, the fall trees so different than the trees of the jungle.

“We’ve cleared a hundred square meters, maybe more. I’ve hired two men to help dig,” Mahler said.

“Anything? Anything at all?”

“Not yet,” Mahler said. “But I feel we’re close.”

“Well, I feel like I’m going broke,” Russell said

“It would go faster if you were here.”

“I’ve got a job. Remember?”

“Fucking General Selva’s wife?” Mahler said. For a moment Russell didn’t think he’d heard him correctly.

“What?”

“Her . . . her maid is Carl’s maid’s sister,” Mahler said. “If the servants know, man, it won’t be long until Selva knows.” Mahler hung up.

SIXTEEN

There was a drought. Every day for weeks now, the sky had stayed viciously clear and blue. Someone at his office said that it was the result of global warming and that Mother Earth, who had been seriously screwed with, was now, finally, getting back at everyone.

It was very hot outside, thirty-five Celsius. Russell and the bellboy walked through the lush grounds of the hotel, the air redolent, the glare at noon unbearable even with sunglasses. Russell was wearing a white cotton suit and blue tie. The bellboy had insisted on coming with him to show him the room, insisted too on carrying his briefcase.

He’d gotten a five-hundred-dollar-a-day suite at the Hotel Santo Domingo in Antigua. Beatrice had come to the hotel for a tennis tournament; she’d called him at his office and pleaded with him to leave work and meet her there. He shouldn’t have come, as the well-known hotel was the playground of the country’s rich, and therefore very dangerous. He’d come anyway, because he couldn’t stop himself.

The room was huge, with a view of the hotel’s fabulous walled gardens. The bellboy opened up the minibar, then checked the bathroom, flicking on lights. He didn’t have to say what was obvious: that the American was here to meet a lover. He’d brought no luggage other than his briefcase. The bellboy asked Russell where he would like him to put the briefcase, as if it mattered.

“I’ll take it,” he’d said. He gave the boy a huge tip and told him to bring a bucket of ice. The boy came back with two buckets and put them on the dining room table.

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

“No,” he said. The bellboy smiled knowingly.

“Enjoy your stay,” the bellboy said.

The room was huge. He’d spent too much, but he wanted to impress Beatrice. He wanted her to believe that he could compete with her husband somehow. It was stupid; of course he couldn’t. But he needed to try. That’s what men do when they love a married woman whose husband is very rich. Russell felt in constant competition with Carlos.

There were several big windows off the main room. Some looked on the quiet manicured patio with its topiary and spilling fountain, pink bougainvillea painting the rough volcanic rock walls beyond. Across from that window was a cavernous bedroom. Out the bedroom’s French doors was a small private patio shaded by trees. It was just the kind of room he’d wanted. He was pleased, but uneasy.

We shouldn’t have agreed to meet here
.
I’ll have to tell her about her maid
. Outside there was a breeze. moving the tops of the trees.

He watched Beatrice approach from the patio. She’d come from the tennis courts. She was wearing a short white tennis dress and white blouse, and carrying her racquet over her shoulder in one of those rakish nylon carry bags. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her face flushed from the tennis. A gardener stared at her, holding his rake. She made all other women in the world seem drab. She hurried across the big open patio that the hotel’s restaurant looked out on.

Russell watched her turn her face away from the tables. He wondered how many people eating at the restaurant would recognize her. She was—because of her great beauty—impossible to miss. No other woman carried herself like that. How many would be on their cell phones, making dangerous gossip about the general’s wife? He hadn’t bargained on being frightened every time they met.

De La Madrid’s words from an e-mail came back to him as he watched her:
Thank you for the article. We’ve put the general on the run. Everything’s getting better. I look forward to discussing the campaign with you again. We should have lunch and talk about the privatization of the phone company. I’m convinced that privatization is the way to go and I should get your thoughts on how it might best be done, one economist to another.

When she knocked, it dawned on him that it was only the third time he’d been alone with her. It seemed he’d known her much longer. It had, in fact, only been a few weeks. They didn’t speak; they kissed. Maybe it was all the fear and the tension, but he felt that he’d never been more excited or more in need of a woman’s touch.
You want to possess Beatrice
. She’d been on his mind constantly since the moment he’d left her at the lake.

He held her tightly, felt her sweaty skin slip to the grab of his hands. He kissed her neck and tasted salt. He started to speak, but she didn’t let him. She covered his mouth with a kiss. He saw her tennis racket’s black case drop at her feet. He kicked it away from her, and reached under her blouse.

She seemed to come completely unglued, as if she’d not been fondled or kissed in years. As if he were shocking her body with his hand. He felt her ass move herky-jerky under his palm.

“I thought about you all last night,” she whispered. There were noises outside the door. Men’s husky voices. “I kept waking up and thinking how much I needed you.” He felt her kissing his hand as he looked into the hotel room. He stopped for a second. He heard the voices pass in the corridor outside. She dropped to her knees and undid his pants. He heard the jingle of his belt buckle. “I dreamt I’d been doing this to you.” He felt his pants come down, the awkwardness of it. Her hand on him there suddenly.

“Are you afraid of him? Afraid it’s Carlos?” she asked, looking up at him, her face still flushed. She pulled her blouse off and looked at him, her expression somehow managing to be angelic, her eyes two jolts of blue. She seemed so out of place here in the tropics, her white skin, her English girl’s voice. She began to fondle him as he listened to the voices of the men outside the door. He looked down and watched her. It was like a dream, better than a dream, but with the extra intensity of a dream. She stroked him. He became erect. He heard her laugh and then the sound of that kind of lovemaking. He wanted to stop her and kiss her, but he didn’t. The voices outside got louder, very masculine voices coming back towards them. Suddenly laughing too, then they stopped, and it was very quiet again.