The Cain File (26 page)

There was a pause.

“It does sound as if Alice Mendes traveling alone might be better,” Cain said. “And you’re fine with this change, Comrade? You are my eyes and ears.”

“Absolutely,” Abraham said. “Beatriz and Gabby have come down with a dose of food poisoning, so we would only have to wait for two replacements anyway if you thought she needed an escort.”

“I think it should be fine if Alice Mendes comes alone.”

Cain was getting itchy fingers. He wanted that two mil.

“Very well, Comrade. Alice Mendes plans to leave early morning. As soon as she can make arrangements for a boat up to the Yasuni.”

“Tell her to meet Gauman at the lodge when she arrives.”

“Comrade—Gauman isn’t one of us.”

“Exactly. That’s in keeping with low profile. More soldiers have been posted and are checking everyone’s papers. Make sure Alice has hers in order, by the way.”

“Will do.”

“Have you spoken to your wife? Everything good there?”

There was a pause. “Yes, Comrade. All is in order.”

“Call me if there are any issues.”

“I’m hoping to get some rest now. We have been on the go for many hours.”

“I understand.”

“Vengeance is justice,” Abraham said, signing out.

Pocketing the phone, Maggie turned to Achic. “What are you going to do with Abraham?”

“He’s coming with me,” Achic said. “Once I’ve gotten Marcelo to a doctor. In the meantime, he can stay here. He’s not going anywhere.”

“I need your assurance that Abraham will not be harmed.”

“Why do you care? After what they did to you?”

Her head was still ringing from where Abraham had pistol-whipped her. “I just need your word that you are turning him over to the authorities and won’t be harming him further.”

“I have no further need for him.”

“Good enough.”

Achic picked the hood up from the floor. “Lift your head, Comrade.”

Achic re-hooded Abraham, and dug out a roll of duct tape from his pack. “Legs together now. We want you nice and still, until I get back.”

Maggie slipped on her denim jacket, collected her backpack, walked over to the cluttered table. A copy of the
Quotations of Chairman Mao
was open, face down, the red cover splayed. She picked it up.

The little red book. How many wars had it started? How many lives had it ended?

Maggie opened the book to Chapter 2, quotation 2.  “In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.” Abraham had said:
In class society
.

A simple but pure authentication system. Give the caller an index to the book of Mao’s quotations. He or she needs to respond immediately with a few words that begin the quote. It requires the caller to have memorized the entire book. Something only a devotee could do.

She turned back to the group. “I’ll be in touch,” she said. “Somehow.”

“Just one thing,” Achic said, wrapping Abraham’s ankles with duct tape. “You were going to tell me why you’re so sure we have so much leverage over Cain.”

“It took me a while to figure out,” she said. “But at the Bogotá safe house, and here, it dawned on me that something wasn’t right—the way Abraham spoke about Ernesto. His concern when captured was for his wife—but not his child. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“He loves his wife,” Achic said.

“She looks fairly easy to love,” Marcelo said drily from his chair.

“You don’t think it’s unusual that a man’s first concern wouldn’t be for his child?” Maggie said.

Achic shook his head. “Terrorists are hard to figure out. They don’t think like you and I.”

“Terrorists are no different than you or I,” Maggie said. “They’re just people.” She addressed Abraham. “Tell us why you and your wife fight with each other. Tell us why you really didn’t want her to come.”

“Go to hell,” Abraham growled, face down.

“Because Ernesto isn’t your son.”

Abraham said nothing.

“If he isn’t Abraham’s son,” Achic began. “Then who . . .” He stopped as soon as the words escaped his lips.

“We don’t know how Cain feels about Yalu,” she said. “But we can assume there’s some passion for his son. And that’s why you must move both of them. Immediately.”

“My G-God,” Marcelo said, grinning. “We’ve g-got him,
jefe
. We’ve got Cain. By the short-and-c-curlies.”

Achic said: “It does look that way, doesn’t it?”

They heard Abraham breathing heavily then. It almost sounded like weeping

It was well past midnight as Maggie headed down Chimborazo, the main drag along the wide Napo River. Plenty of signs of life still prevailed, mostly in the form of drunken exchanges wafting out of bars and clubs.

She found a cheap hotel room that wasn’t particularly cheap above a discotheque throbbing with techno pop. Next door to her room, a couple bounded in the throes of passion, or at least one of them did. The woman was putting on a command performance with exaggerated sighs and moans.

Half a dozen empty beer bottles filled a metal waste can by a sagging twin bed. A lone bottle with an inch of beer and sodden cigarette butts lining the bottom sat on the sticky nightstand. Picking up the bottle with thumb and forefinger, she set it next to the wastebasket.

Mildew and grime mottled the bathroom, where a sharp urine scent lingered. As much as she needed one, Maggie decided against a shower in the wretched stall. She unlaced and kicked off her dusty Doc Marten low-rise shoes and stripped down, opting for a sponge bath with Wet Ones, slipping on her clean pair of underwear and white T-shirt. Then she brushed her hair 100 times, her teeth twice, feeling fortified. She rinsed the other pair of panties out in the sink and hung them on a hanger by the open window where they fluttered in the night air. Hopefully, they would dry by morning.

The bed screeched when Maggie sat down on it. She wasn’t about to get under the soiled covers. She opened a bottle of cold sparkling water she’d purchased in a
tienda
next door and fired up her MacBook, plugging it in to a wall socket to charge.

Three emails from Ed, one dated the day she left the U.S., two today. Yesterday actually, because it was now past midnight.

Just checking in
read the subject line of the first. She skipped that.

Where are you?
read
the second.

Need to talk to you ASAP
was the third. It requested an acknowledgement receipt, but she declined, opening it anyway. Ed, she thought, you are such a newbie sometimes.

Maggs-

I just heard a scary rumor about that cowboy you worked with last week. I actually swung by your place tonight but you weren’t home. Please tell that woman who lives downstairs I’m not a stalker. I know you said you were going to take off for the mountains but now I’m hoping those mountains aren’t the Andes. Don’t do anything foolish. We’ve been friends a long time and you can always talk to me. Give me a call as soon as you get this. Notice I didn’t use the word ‘please’ there.

Maggie took a drink of fizzy water. She needed to contact Sinclair. Donning her headphones she Skyped his number in Alexandria, Virginia.

Sinclair Michaels answered, looking groggy and ruffled. He was sitting in a home office, wearing a robe. The green shade of a banker’s lamp cast light on a Redskins pennant pinned to the wall behind him.

“I’m clean,” Maggie said.
Safe to talk.

“Hello, Maggie,” he said in a voice clotted with sleep. Or Scotch.

She brought him up to speed. Sinclair nodded from time to time, hands folded in front of him on his desk. He seemed to take her news in stride, even the part about the Coca safe-house rescue and the deaths of two
terrucos,
and the arrests of Abraham, Yalu, and Ernesto, although she could see that he was aggravated. Most likely because the op had derailed and been taken over by Ecuadorian intelligence.
They’d
scored well enough. Sinclair Michaels, for his part, hadn’t delivered. It was results that mattered, especially for a contractor.

She didn’t mention Ernesto being Cain’s son. That information she would keep to herself for the time being.

“And where are Yalu and her son now?”

“Achic is going to have them moved.”

“Where?”

“He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.”

Sinclair frowned. “It’s unfortunate we weren’t able to complete the transaction,” he said. “But good work.”

“Not exactly.”

“Never mind,” he said. “Can you get to Coca airport? I’ll have a ticket waiting and a diplomatic letter to speed you through to Quito and then out of the country. You still have your Alice Mendes ID?”

“I do,” she said. “But I can make my own way to Quito. I know the country pretty well.”

“Of course you do.”

“And I’m not ready to come back yet.”

He gave a squint. “No?”

“I’m meeting Cain,” she said.

Sinclair Michaels eyed her sideways in the webcam.

“I’m going through with the transfer,” she said. She told him about the phone call she had Abraham make to Cain.

“And Cain is willing to follow these new measures?”

“Why not? He’s changed gears on us three times so far. He
wants
this money. It’s within his grasp. He has no idea his people were arrested. He thinks it’s business as usual and that we just want to keep a low profile. So the operation continues. Simply another change of venue. One that that benefits him, actually.”

She watched Sinclair pick up a glass with an inch or two of amber liquid in the bottom and take a slug. He set it down, out of sight. For the first time ever, she saw him smile. Not much of one, but still.

“Are you really prepared to go through with this, Maggie?”

“I want Tica out—remember? And the rest of her cohorts. I need Beltran back in Quito where he can get that done.”

“I’m not sure I can get anyone there in time to assist you.”

“I don’t need anyone. Don’t want anyone. No more cowboys. We just need to make sure the actual trade takes place somewhere safe.”

“Most definitely.”

“I’m thinking Quito. National Bank of Ecuador. Main branch.”

“Good choice. Our part of the world. On the plaza, so we can cover it from multiple angles.”

“I’ll be in touch,” she said. “Probably within the next twelve hours. Right after I meet Cain. How’s John Rae? Or rather,
where
is John Rae?”

“Bogotá. But I’m told he’s going to be released. You know South America. They have fifty terms for the word
delay
.”

Yes, she knew all about that. “Where, exactly? What facility?”

“Just a moment,” he said, clacking away on his keyboard, reading from a screen to the side of the webcam. “
Penal Corporativo
. But he’s being processed. It’ll just take longer than expected.”

“That’s great news,” she said.

“John Rae’s going to be impressed when he sees how you’ve held up. And with what you’re about to do—single-handed.”

“It’s a milk run.”

Sinclair gave up another tight smile. “Performed by someone who has just shy of three operations under her belt. Who weathered a serious firefight. Two. You’ve got quite a career ahead of you. If you want it.”

Did she? She’d think about that later. For now, she was focused on the op—and springing Tica. “I better sign off.”

“Good luck. Not that you need it.”

Yeah, she would. But she felt lucky enough.

She could also smell something. Something that bore the hint of
rat
.

Once Maggie logged out of Skype, she opened Iggy, the chat client she wrote back in grad school with her
compadre
Enzo, and pinged France.

@Enzo99 hola - ayt?

It was late afternoon in Paris. She knew Enzo lived in an electronic cave where lights flashed and screens flickered 24/7. He never went outdoors. He was a cyber-vampire.

A reply began to appear:

Enzo99:
Hey,
ca va
?

Magdalena: looking for some info on a friend

Enzo99:
aren’t we all

Magdalena: so true
☺

Enzo99:
is this the one that disappeared? – nothing new sori to saye

Magdalena: no, another one

Enzo99:
oh, sori to her that

Magdalena: ‘Bogotá international airport, American, arrest, Jack Warren, Penal Corporativo’ – there are your search parms, bro

Enzo99:
Got it, 1 sec . . .

Magdalena: he was supposed to have been released this am,
FWIW

Maggie waited while the bed next door banged against the wall amidst the horrendous overacting on the part of the female.

Finally, a response came back.

Enzo99:
not Penal Corporativo - La Picota Prison - Bogotá

Magdalena: not Penal Corporativo - u sure?

Enzo99:
y
wud I lie to u?

Magdalena: not intentionally – at least I hope not
☺
is he being released, can you tell?

A few seconds passed.

Nothing here about that. hes in max security

Huh? Maggie thought.
Huh!

Magdalena: muchas gracias, eh?

Enzo99:
de nada

Magdalena: ciao

There was a silence before Enzo responded.

Enzo99:
u know, one of these days . . .

Magdalena: Yes
,
I know.
We have to meet in person. But how r u going to keep a brave
☺
on your face when you see i weigh 300 pounds? That
’
s 140 kilos to u BTW

Enzo99:
lol - I no u r a fether. I cn tell by the liteness of your kystrokes.

Dude was talking about her strokes now.

Magdalena: ic
.
well, i think u might be dee-luded, mon

Enzo99:
I think you’re beautiful.

She took a deep breath through her nose.

Magdalena: You don’t really know me. I am not so nice.

Enzo99:
disagree

Magdalena: I’m so sorry, Enzo—this is a really bad time. I’ll ping u when I get back, k, and we can chat up then?