Thief (23 page)

Monarch lived on a small
estancia
in Patagonia, near the southern end of the Andes, and he wondered what the great mountain range looked like this far north. Before he could ask Santos whether the mountains were visible from the river basin where they were going, the plane dropped altitude and landed.

It was all business for the next few hours. The plane took them to a private hangar where they transferred the supplies and equipment from the cargo hold to a flatbed delivery truck. The heat and humidity built with every minute and was brutal by the time they were finished.

“I need a shower,” Monarch said. “I'm drenched.”

“You could take twenty showers a day and it wouldn't make a difference,” Santos said. “There'll be no getting away from the heat and humidity where we're going. You have to slow down and drink a lot of water or it will get you for sure.”

Monarch was only half paying attention to her.

A private jet had landed and taxied to a stop on the tarmac two hundred yards away. Six or seven men wearing dark sunglasses, shorts, and colorful shirts poured out of it, heading into another hangar. He would have written them off as well-to-do tourists were it not for the way they carried themselves. They were alert, heads roving about, and their gait studied: balance forward, hips and shoulders square to the ground. To Monarch's eyes, their posture read combat, and their actions screamed military-trained.

“Robin?” Santos said.

Monarch startled and looked away from the jet and its passengers to find the scientist gazing at him with her arms crossed. “Didn't you hear me? We're ready to go. We've got a van waiting outside.”

Beyond her the flatbed was already in gear, rolling toward the open back doors of the hangar. The other scientists and their assistants followed on foot.

“Sorry,” Monarch said, picked up his knapsack, and glanced over his shoulder again seeing that the men were all inside the other hangar except a shaved-head black guy built like a linebacker, pulling a carry-on with wheels.

He saw the man for a beat or two and only from behind, but Monarch had the odd sense that he reminded him of someone.

 

30

MONARCH WANTED TO STROLL
down there and try to get a better look at him and the others, but Santos was impatient. He turned and went with the scientist to the van. They left the airport, and drove into Manaus, a city literally hacked out of the jungle, and built up by pioneers, who'd erected municipal buildings, theaters, and churches.

It was overcast and misting that day, and the temperature at noon hovered at one hundred and two. Even so, he wouldn't use the air conditioner. Instead, Monarch hung out the window, taking it all in. He reveled in the smells of exotic places. Here he caught the scents of peppers and frying oil, bread and brewing coffee, oxen and goats.

Braying donkeys, sheep, and people crowded the narrower streets near the fish and meat markets, where a rank stench pervaded. Against it all pulsating funk music blared from shops and booths. Vendors yelled to him, offering their wares. A group of kids broke from the crowd, and came up alongside the taxi begging. Monarch threw coins and bills at them and caused a minor riot that made him genuinely happy in one sense and somber in another.

He loved helping poor kids, but they'd made him think of Sister Rachel.

It had been roughly four days since she was taken. Monarch had been held against his will and knew what day four felt like. Unless she was blindfolded or deprived of light, the first two or three days would pass quickly. But ninety-six hours into her captivity, even if she were being treated well, Sister Rachel would begin to despair. It broke his heart, but knew from personal experience that doubt has a way of creeping up on you in your darkest hours.

They made a series of stops to fully stock their food supplies, and to buy spare plugs, wires, and hoses for the outboard engines. They had a late lunch of incredibly good pulled pork sandwiches before driving down to the lake around four that afternoon.

They parked near the old customhouse and the central pier where three multideck, surprisingly large and colorful ferries were docked. Hundreds of passengers and animals were leaving the ferries all at once, creating a pushing, yelling, crying mob on the wharf.

Santos went to the ferry office to negotiate and pay lading charges for the supplies and equipment. Monarch let Carson, Rousseau, and their graduate assistants oversee the loading of the gear into a hold on one of the high-speed river vessels.

With more than thirty minutes until they set sail, he walked to a small park between the wharf and the old customhouse, and dug out a satellite phone he'd bought in Rio.

He tried to call Claudio, but got his machine. Monarch said he'd try to call later. He next phoned Gloria Barnett, and found her defrosting in a steaming bath at a four-star in Zug, Switzerland.

“We've been on the Hormels for three days,” she told him. “The estate's a fortress with armed guards and dogs patrolling at night. Hormel travels in a bulletproof limo.”

“Someone feels threatened,” Monarch said.

“Definitely. Zullo's having no luck getting into his computers, personal, and professional. He thinks Hormel has been down this road before.”

“Hacked?”

“Affirmative. The firewall and security system is custom and state of the art. Zullo still doesn't quite understand it.”

“So what's the plan?”

“Tats and Fowler aren't back yet, but I think there's a chink in the armor we might be able to exploit, grab Hormel, and squeeze him.”

“They have any idea you're there?”

Barnett explained what had happened earlier that morning. Monarch listened in amazement to her account of being chased through the snow, and then setting up an ambush with a tripod for a weapon.

Gloria?
She was the best black ops runner in the world, but flunked out of the CIA's field program.
To take out a guy with an improvised weapon was, well, incredible!

“What are you laughing at? That was the scariest moment of my life!”

“No, no, I'm laughing at … I dunno … the fact that you are much more devious and resourceful than I give you credit for. Gloria Barnett you are a … a beast!”

She giggled, and replied, “I had a great teacher. The scientists have any idea what you're really up to?”

Monarch shifted uncomfortably, said, “No.”

“Any angle we're missing?”

“Sami Rafiq,” Monarch said. “He got me into this.”

“He was pretty pissed at you after Thailand.”

“I know,” Monarch said. “If you get the chance, call him, tell him I'm not happy.”

“He'll have a nervous breakdown.”

“Treachery has repercussions.”

He heard the ferry horn blow. “Gotta go. Leave me messages or e-mails.”

He hung up before she replied, and then headed to the wharf. Monarch pushed aside thoughts of the Lebanese forger and wrestled with conflicting emotions over deceiving Dr. Santos. She was a good person, hard working, with high ideals, not the sort of scum he usually set out to fleece.

And the work Santos was doing …

Sister Rachel had always preached to him about the importance of the greater good. But where did the greater good put the missionary's life when balanced against the kind of scientific breakthrough Santos's research promised?

So what was really at stake here? Ownership? Christ, stealing ideas happened all the time in university labs. He'd heard of a guy who actually invented the computer mouse at MIT, and never got a cent from it.

The ferry horn sounded again. He trotted down the wharf knowing when it came right down to it, no matter how good a person Estella Santos was, he would take her secrets and he would trade them.

He owed Sister Rachel that much and more.

 

31

SISTER RACHEL KEPT TAKING
deep breaths and letting them out slow as she prayed to God to save her from what was to come.

It was only a matter of time now. Vargas had fed her hours ago, so it would not be long before she heard the key in the lock again, and her trial would begin again. It had been that way yesterday, and the three days before that.

The missionary had always believed that her conviction in God would be enough to weather any storm, endure any challenge. Her devoutness had taken her to the Sisters of Hope and to the slums. When the odds were completely against her, belief had enabled her to build up a clinic, and then an orphanage.

But this was different. For the first time in her life, she truly understood the torture and hardship Jesus went through during his forty days and forty nights in the desert. For the first time, she understood what it was to face evil in a battle for her soul.

Pure evil. There was no other ways to describe Vargas, and still she sought to understand him. How had he gotten that way?

Her question led her, as it had several times in the past four days, to memories of she and Robin climbing down the steep hill behind the orphanage the afternoon after he'd failed to sway any of his brothers away from the gang.

*   *   *

“You'll think about going to America and joining the military?” Sister Rachel asked. Light was waning and Robin had become a silhouette on the trail in front of her.

He didn't say anything for several moments, and then replied, “I will.”

Before she could take the conversation in another direction, both Sister Rachel and Robin alerted to the bell ringing at the front gate to the orphanage. It kept ringing every minute or so, seventeen times in all by the missionary's count.

When they entered the compound by the rear door, one of the Sisters of Hope, an older nurse named Evangeline, hurried to them, rubbing her hands together.

“Why doesn't someone answer the bell?” Sister Rachel asked.

“There are many unsavory men outside the gate, Sister,” Sister Evangeline said with a worried tone. “We have spoken to them through the porthole, but they will not say what they want other than to talk to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes, Sister,” Sister Evangeline said.

“You can get cleaned up, and ready for dinner,” Sister Rachel told Robin, and set off toward the front gate. Many of the orphans were standing in groups back from the gate, watching it with apprehension.

She paid close attention to their reaction. She'd found over the years that orphans had the uncanny ability to sense possible trouble. The missionary opened the porthole to the gate, and saw in the dim light from a streetlamp a large group of men. She frowned, took two steps to her right and flipped a switch, turning on the outside lights.

“Why did you keep them in the dark?” she asked Sister Evangeline.

Sister Evangeline had no answer, lowered her head, said, “I don't know, Sister. They troubled me.”

Sister Rachel noticed that Robin was standing with several of the older children. Returning to the porthole, she saw the men, most of them in their early twenties, all of them hard and suspicious.

Except the handsome lanky kid with the wild curly brown hair, who said, “You remember me? Sister Rachel? I was the one who told you about the stabbing in the
ano
?”

She remembered him then. “Yes.”

“My name is Claudio. We are all friends of Robin.”

He showed her the tattoo on his inner right arm, said, “Do you really think I can become a painter?”

Her heart beat wildly, before she replied, “Claudio, you can become anything as long as you do it in the name of a greater good.”

“What about being a motorcycle builder?” asked a second young man, who stepped up beside Claudio to peer into the porthole at her.

“I don't see why not.”

“A cook?” another called to her.

“God loves good cooks, just as he loves all who serve a purpose.”

“Well, then,” Claudio said. “You have room for seventeen of us in there?”

“You'll have to earn your keep, but we'll make room,” Sister Rachel replied, and, ignoring Sister Evangeline's doubtful stare, lifted the iron bar that locked the gate.

When Claudio and sixteen brothers trooped through the open gate, the missionary looked to Robin, who grinned and fought back tears.

“You've done a great and difficult thing,” Sister Rachel told him hours later when Claudio and the others had bedded down in the barn, and the children had all gone to sleep in the dormitory.

“Does it help me?” he asked. “I mean, with that scale?”

“I should think it helps a great deal, Robin. I'm very proud of you.”

Robin beamed, nodded, and headed off toward the barn and his brothers.

Sister Rachel watched him go, and wondered what else he might be capable of. Though his moral compass was hardly true, she believed he was all possibility and energy, a boy who—

The gate bell at the orphanage pealed once more.

This time the missionary went alone and turned on the outside light before opening the porthole door to see a muscled young man with a shaved head and a deformed ear glaring at her.

“I want my brothers, bitch,” he said.

“Your brothers are sleeping,” she said calmly. “They need a good night sleep if they are to go another way in their life. Would you like to join them?”

“Join them,” he said, spitting the words back at her. “You tell those fucking traitors, Robin and Claudio and all the other cowards that the brotherhood lives on without them, and the brotherhood never forgets. You tell them one day they'll die for what they've done. You too, bitch.”

Before she could say anything he spun on his heels, and walked off. Five or six other men appeared from the shadows and trailed him.

*   *   *

The key slid in the door lock, ripping Sister Rachel from those long-ago days.

The dead bolt threw. Panic surged through the missionary, and she had to fight to remain calm when the door opened, and Vargas entered.