The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller (21 page)

We walked down to the water. A monk in a boat held an empty palm to the sky. The others returned the gesture, waded in to their knees and climbed into the boat.

“The water’s cold,” I said. “Can’t you get it any closer?”

In answer, the monks manhandled me into the lake, and marched me through frigid water up to our thighs. I seized the opportunity and emptied my bladder into my pants. The long stream of hot piss kept the brass monkeys at bay.

Four wooden benches had been laid across the width of the boat. Two outboard motors pointed their blades in the air. A monk on shore untied the rope that held the craft to a small jetty, then ran into the water, robes flying, and clambered in to join us.

Oars appeared. Two monks pulled us into deeper water. The outboard motors splashed astern. A pull of the chains, and they growled and hissed, darted forward, nearly knocking us off our seats. I held on to the wooden plank with both hands. We headed toward Isla del Sol. After a few minutes, though, we veered to the left, back to the Peruvian shore.

“Where are we going?” I shouted. The cold lake water sprayed up on both sides. No one answered me.

The sun began to set. Shadow advanced toward us across the lake. In the east, still wrapped in sunlight, a tour group disembarked from the reed islands, near the Bolivian shore. Our boat hopped and skipped across the light waves. We sped west into shadow, into the darkness, back toward Peru.

Several dozen wooden houses lined the strand. Lights shone in every window. Children ran and shouted. Small boats lay beached on the sand. On the rocks higher up, green fishing nets dried in the cool air. To either side the beach petered out into a solid rock wall. A mountain loomed snowy above us. Our boat slowed. The pilot cut the motor. A monk vaulted over the side, trailing the rope. His robes floated in the freezing water. The others jumped after him, and together they heaved the boat onto the beach. Red Cap strode ahead and alone into the village. He disappeared around a corner.

I got out of the boat. The others ignored me. There was nowhere to run. Plus, I was soaked from the waist down. My testicles were tight balls of brass. I had no more piss left to warm them with. My feet squelched freezing water in my boots. A sliver of sun remained above the mountaintops. If I tried to escape I’d freeze to death in the night.

The path Red Cap took was a mixture of sand and gravel. I followed it. On either side, new wooden houses. Solar panels glinted on their roofs. A trickle of smoke emerged from each house’s chimney. One building was marked
Escuela.
The schoolhouse. Another, painted with a red cross, Hospital.

Children swarmed the gravel path, chasing each other, shouting in Quechua. One boy crashed into my thigh. He dug his fingers into my leg. I knelt. He looked like he was about to cry. I smiled, brushed the sand out of his black hair. He observed me with enormous brown eyes.

“Pitt?” I said in Spanish. “Do you know Pitt?”

“Pitt!” the boy said, and giggled, his torso twisting. “Pitt Pitt Pitt!”

He tore free and ran off, gyrating in circles before disappearing into a house farther along the row. I followed. I peered in through the glass windows of the houses as I passed. Well-dressed locals sat around tables spread with food. White teeth gleamed under electric lights. Dentures, most likely.

I came to the house the child had entered. He sat at a table, fidgeting. He caught me looking in at him, and waved. The family turned to see who it was. The squat Indian woman in her fake braids ducked her head. Her husband lifted his chin, a curt masculine gesture that said: welcome, and beware. Six more children sat at the table. Their plates were full. No sign of a six-foot-tall blond gringo. I waved back and continued my sightseeing.

Next to the house was a small mud-brick hut. A toothless old man sat in the doorway, darning an ancient fishing net. He looked at me and laughed. He cackled, a bitter sound, then hacked and finally gargled up a blob of red, which he spat in the dust at my feet.

His was the only hut of its kind in the village, the lone holdout, it seemed, against modernity. I walked quickly now, as the sun set, past another half a dozen houses.

The path ended in the mouth of a cave. Two monks sat cross-legged on either side, their hands in their laps. I ignored them, walked toward the entrance of the cave. The monks simultaneously lifted pump-action shotguns, chambered a shell each and pointed their weapons at my abdomen. I stopped, held out my empty palms.

“The welcome wagon plum forgot to teach you manners,” I said.

“Hello, Horse.”

A woman stood inside the cave. The early evening shadow obscured her face, but I would recognize that voice anywhere.

“I didn’t come here to see you,” I said.

“I know.”

“I’m looking for Pitt. Friend of mine. Is he here?”

The woman stepped from the shadow, and the face of Katherine, my Kate, my once-wife, my ex-wife, my never-wife, emerged into the brightening moonlight.

“He is, and you shall see him.”

Fourteen

She said, “Mother Earth’s in danger.”

“Why?” I asked. “Has Papa Earth been a bad boy?”

We walked in growing shadow. I took off my wet boots and socks, felt the frigid sand between my toes. The sun had set behind the mountains, but there was still daylight on the lake. A cold evening breeze numbed my ears. We strolled along the shore, past a row of half-completed wooden houses. A dozen men and women labored on the empty shells, hammers banging, saws grinding.

“Yes,” she said. “He has.”

Kate put her arm through mine. Unlike the other monks, who wore orange and scarlet, her robes were black. The feel of her wrist in the inner softness of my elbow, even through four layers of clothing, broke open the dam of my memories. It also broke open half a dozen fresh burns. She looked up at me. How many times had she done that, wanting to be kissed? But those days were dust and ashes.

“Now we must atone,” she said.

“For what?”

“For hurting her.”

I swallowed. “Hurting who?”

“Gaia.”

“Oh.”

She led me along the beach. I studied the workers, looking for Pitt. They wore jeans and Incan beanies with woolen ear flaps. They were gringos, all of them, and ranged from late twenties to early eighties, including a pair of grandparents who later tried to put me to sleep with photos of their offspring. None of them was Pitt.

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone New Age.”

Kate grinned and closed her eyes. She nodded her head. “Gaia is the world, Horse. She is the mother spirit who inhabits every living thing.” She stopped walking. “And yes, she is in danger.”

“You tried calling 9-1-1?”

She laughed, her face tilted up at the moon. “Never lose your cynicism, Horse,” she said, and lay a cold knuckle against my cheek. “Gaia is everywhere, even in you.”

Her touch hit me like a downed power line. All the memories, the longing and the loss, crackled between her skin and mine.

I nuzzled her hand, feeling the coldness. “Why am I here, Kate?” I asked. “Did you plan this?”

She pulled away. “Plan what?”

“You kidnapped me, didn’t you?” I threw out my arms. “Well here I am. You wanted me that bad, why didn’t you just say so?”

She drummed her fingertips against her face. “Horse,” she said, and looked at the ground. “Horse, I—”

“Blessed Katherine, please tell us, when will be the leave-taking?” The voice came from the last of the construction sites. A fat man in blue overalls three sizes too small for him climbed out from under a wooden porch. His voice was effeminate.

Kate pulled away. “Soon,” she called out, on tiptoe, as though willing him not to come near.

“We are all of us so impatient to go.” The man waddled toward us. His face held the cherubic innocence of a child. He waved a chubby hand at the houses. “This building activity. It grows tiresome.”

“You’re paying what, two grand a week to be here, and you’re in a hurry to leave?” I asked.

He smiled the smile of an idiot. Or was it a saint? “What does money matter at a time like this?” He clutched his chest with both hands, inclined his double chins to the heavens. “So close are we to bliss!”

“Patience, Blessed Jonathan.” Kate squeezed his upper arm. I gritted my teeth. Was this her new lover? Not really her type. If I sucker-punched him, could I take him? And what was up with this “blessed” crap, anyway?

“What says the Blessed Victor?” he asked, bending over at the waist. “Have we earned our robes?”

Kate lowered her voice. “He is almost ready. You may tell the others.”

The man bounced on tiptoe and clapped his hands together. “Yippee!”

“Will Pitt be leaving with you too?” I asked.

The man beamed. “I should certainly hope so!”

“You know Pitt?”

“Sure.” His lips parted. Yellow teeth gleamed dully inside his shiny face. “The Blessed Pitt came to us about a month ago. Didn’t know a thing at first. But he soon learned.”

“What did he learn?” That was the rub.

A chuckle. “What all of us must learn.”

I made a show of looking around. “Where is he now?”

“He has gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Where all of us will soon be going.” The man addressed Kate. “This one,” he said, and jerked his head at me, “he is a new recruit then?”

“Yes.” She answered for me. “I have much to explain to him.”

“Such happiness! Such joy!” He embraced me. “Oh welcome, welcome, welcome!”

I pulled away. He stank of incense and patchouli oil.

Kate tugged at my elbow. “Dinnertime soon. Why don’t you take some sacred sustenance?”

His tongue wagged like a puppy dog. “I shall savor every bite.”

I stared at his retreating figure. “‘Sacred sustenance’? ‘The Blessed Katherine’?”

She lowered her eyes. “It is our form of address.”

“Kate, what the fuck is going on here?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said quietly.

“Who are these people? What is with all of the guns? What are you doing here? And where is Pitt?”

She didn’t look at me. “Maybe I should let the Blessed Victor explain.”

“And who the fuck is Victor?”

“Victor,” she said, and paused, a thin smile on her lips, eyes lifted once again to the moonlit sky. “Victor is a man.”

“I see,” I said. “At least we know he’s not a god.”

Kate pulled again on my elbow. “He wants to meet you.”

I pitched my voice high in a sci-fi monotone. “Take me to your leader.”

She laughed, leaned into me. “You’ll see.”

We walked along, her arm through mine, huddled close against the chill. That old familiar happiness crept in. I piled high the barbed wire, mounted the machine guns, but like a chlorine gas attack it swept across the trenches and descended into my lungs, poisoning my soul with delirium.

I turned to face her. “Kate?”

“Yes?”

“Do you believe in better late than never?”

She smoothed the hair out of my eyes. “With all my heart.”

“Because I have to say,” and I gestured at the barren beach, the badly built houses, the lake placid and freezing, “I don’t see what this is doing for you.”

She laid a hand on my chest. “Let the Blessed Victor explain. It will all make sense.”

I put my arm around her waist. She left it there.

“Alright,” I said.

We came to the cave again. At its mouth, to one side, a small generator hummed and throbbed, burping diesel fumes. The monks didn’t move, shotguns in their laps. We walked between them, ducked our heads and stepped inside the cave. A thick orange extension cord ran from the generator into the darkness. We shuffled ahead, bent at the waist.

Ten meters into the cave the tunnel widened, and we stood up straight. At regular intervals the extension cord linked to another and branched off, and a caged construction lamp dangled from a hook on the wall. The cave was the size of a cathedral. Stalactites like organ pipes hung from the roof. To one side, monks in orange and scarlet sat cross-legged in a semi-circle, their focus a stack of wooden crates. A monk in an elaborate scarlet headdress stalked the shadows, a small whip in the crook of his arm.

“The fuck is this place, Kate?” I said. “You gone and joined a cult?”

She laughed. “They will call us that, I’m sure. But when they see what we’ve accomplished, it won’t matter what they think.”

“What have you accomplished?”

But she refused to say. One more time she slid her arm through mine. The orange extension cord continued to the center of the cave. It ended at a small wooden desk, where a man in blue jeans and a worn tweed jacket sat typing on a laptop.

Construction lamps on wooden posts cast light on the man’s face. He was early fifties. A gray combover draped itself like a dead squirrel from one ear to the other. His head was enormous, out of all proportion to his body. Despite the cold in the cave, he wore no hat. Perhaps they didn’t make hats that size.

“Two percent,” he muttered to himself in a childish sing-song falsetto. He bit a thumbnail. “Two percent, two percent.”

“Two percent of what?” I asked. “You a dairy farmer?” My voice echoed in the cave.

“Chance of failure.” He sat back in his chair and looked up. He was slight of build. Looked underfed. “Kate, my dear. Please.” His accent was Russian. “New recruits go over there.”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, resumed his frantic typing.

Red Cap knelt on the floor near the wall. He clutched an armful of orange and scarlet to his chest. His cap lay upturned on the floor. A monk shaved what remained of his hair with a straight-edge razor.

“In the next life. What will you be?” intoned a second monk.

“A plant, maybe,” Red Cap said excitedly. “Krill.”

“Victor,” Kate said.

She draped an arm around the Russian combover dude’s shoulder, a casual act of intimacy that made me gasp for air.

He frowned at his computer screen. “What is it?”

“This is Horace.”

“And who might Horace be?”

I slapped the laptop shut on his fingers. “Horse. The friend of Pitt’s? Kate’s husband?” I laid emphasis on the final word.

Victor pushed back his chair with a screech, bounded to his feet, hair bobbing on his balloon-like head, hands swaying as he breathed, a high-altitude, cave-dwelling jack-in-the-box.