Heart of the World (30 page)

“Come on,” he said. “Move it. Time to go.”

CHAPTER 26

The leaf-filled sack hung by a strap
from Roldan's right shoulder. His white trousers were rolled to his calves and his bare, brown feet marched steadily uphill. We'd been trekking for three hours, maybe more; I wasn't sure because I no longer had a watch. Birds chittered and sang overhead. Sunlight dappled the ground through the thick leafy canopy and sweat ran down my forehead.

My feet hurt, but damned if I was going to mention it. Roldan had returned the flat-heeled sandals I'd worn to the Zona Rosa—reasonable footware for city streets, hopeless for a steep climb—with grave courtesy. I was debating whether or not I'd do better barefoot when a thin black snake skittered across the path.

It was just the two of us, no guards, no followers. Roldan wielded a machete the size of a handsaw. The path was overgrown, and he slashed at the hanging vines like he'd been born with the blade in his hands. His body moved with the rhythm of the blade, making the task seem effortless.

Was this what Cabrera saw in him? Broad shoulders and quiet determination? A man who can tame his environment, be it changing the oil or slashing a path through the jungle, is, to many women, dead sexy. Add Roldan's gauntly handsome face and mysterious aloofness, and the age difference might melt away. I imagined Paolina's mother, Marta, fifteen
years ago, before bitterness dulled her eyes and sharpened her tongue. I tried to picture Roldan as a well-dressed man about Bogota.

Had she pursued him relentlessly, seeing the wealthy son of her employer as a perfect long-term meal ticket? Had he been the agressor, raping a young girl in his family's care? I could easily imagine either scenario. Marta would have been beautful, innocent and ripe. And Roldan—well, Roldan, at that age, must have been a force to be reckoned with, a smoldering volcano.

I'd never met a man who projected such an aura of sincerity. If he'd sworn that tiny Marta had tossed him across a mattress and raped
him
, I'd have been tempted to believe it. That straightforward penetrating gaze, the inner stillness…He set off every warning bell in my body. Usually I trust myself; I'm good at telling truth from bullshit, but with Roldan, I couldn't read the signals. The alchemy of attraction was getting in my way. He could be telling the truth. He could be lying.

At the start of the trek, I'd talked non-stop, trying my best to paint Paolina's likeness, to make Roldan see his daughter as I did, value her as I did. I'd praised her volleyball skills, her musical talent. I'd attempted to flatter his vanity by describing how much she resembled him. I'd tried to engage him in more general conversation, thinking, like all captives, that once my captor knew me, he'd find it harder to kill me. He'd been unresponsive to every gambit, and the path had risen steeply through a cloud of mist, a challenging climb that silenced me. Now, the going was easier, but by no means effortless.

We topped a small peak. Below us, a mountain stream carved a deep ravine filled with golden flowers. Not Wordsworth's daffodils; those gentle words and flowers were alien to this savage landscape. The sun ignited the gold, and the stream sparkled so brightly I had to squint. Snowcapped peaks formed the backdrop for an image that beggared any picture postcard. I concentrated on putting one foot ahead of the other, and silence seemed to work where speech had failed.

“They say God made Colombia the most beautiful country on earth. Then, to make up for it, He gave us the cruelest, most violent people.” His voice was full and strong, like he'd been lounging in an easy chair instead of climbing.

I nodded, too winded to agree or disagree.

“Centuries of bloodshed, from before the time of the
conquistadores
. Hundreds of thousands killed in
La Violencia, campesinos
forced to choose between Liberals and Conservatives, hunted by private armies, by guerrillas, by the regular army for making the wrong choice, whichever choice they made, driven from the countryside into the cities to live in shantytowns and starve.”

“And drug dealers, too. Don't forget the
narcos.”
A little needling might move him from the historical to the personal.

He sliced through a heavy root with a flick of his machete. “I suppose I was what you would call a ‘drug dealer,' but only for a brief time.” His scorn put quotation marks around the words.

Right, I thought. Bad press.

“I was a revolutionary, no? I had little love for my government, but I loved my country. I was born rich, to the upper class, but not with the kind of money that could change the way things are done here. Not enough to buy up land and redistribute it to those displaced by war. I couldn't build roads and dams in the countryside, or vaccinate against disease. Cocaine, for a little while, looked like a gift of God. The Arabs had oil. We had cocaine. You see?”

I shook my head. Oil and cocaine weren't the same in my book.

“It was romantic. It was fashionable. Everyone, the best people, used it. This was before crack, before
basuca
, you know, before kids started smoking the raw paste. We saw ourselves as heroes, selling drugs to foreigners who lived only for pleasure, for drinking and eating their lives away. We were transferring the wealth from the north to the south, back where it belonged, taking it from the nation that gave us United Fruit and giving it back to the
campesinos.”

“You stole from the rich and gave to the poor. You're Robin Hood and this is Sherwood Forest.” My turn for sarcasm.

Unoffended, he held out his arms like a bishop blessing his flock at Sunday mass. “This is the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the coast of the Caribbean Sea. This is the highest coastal range on the face of the earth.”

The Caribbean coast was hundreds of miles from landlocked Bogota. I visualized a map in my head, pictured the northern edge of Colombia, of the continent, near the Venezuelan border. No one would think to look for me here. Even if the hotel staff realized I was no longer
occupying my room, even if they informed the embassy, who would dream I was here, climbing the highest coastal range on earth in flimsy sandals? No wonder I found it hard to breathe.

As much to keep from thinking about my predicament as anything else, I said, “Who knew you had a daughter in the States?”

Instead of answering, he asked a question of his own. “Those photographs, where did you get them?”

During a brief stretch when the incline was almost gentle, I explained about the airport surveillance shots, the stills printed from the video film, the proximity of the man and woman to Paolina in the security line. Then the path rose vertically between boulders. Roldan, barefoot, part mountain goat, never faltered. I avoided a sprained ankle by quick reflexes and sheer luck.

“And the phone number of Base Eighteen, where did you get that?” he asked.

“I told you. From Drew Naylor. What is Base Eighteen?”

“And how did you find this man, Naylor?”

“Through your lawyer, Thurman Vandenburg. In Miami.”

“Ah.” The machete whistled through the air to cut through low-hanging vines.

“You used him before, as a go-between, when you sent money.”

“That was years ago.” He used a vine to pull himself up a boulder, then offered the dangling end to me. “Now, there are rumors.”

“What rumors?”

“We have ground to cover. Your feet—”

“Are fine,” I snapped, unwilling to be grouped with idle foreigners, useless for anything but snorting coke. “What rumors?” “Save your energy for the climb.”

“Who is the American in the hut?”

“Save your breath.”

“If you're no longer involved with drugs, why was Paolina kidnapped?”

“You think only drug dealers have enemies?” He indicated the scar on his face. It puckered the corner of his eye and sliced the meat of his cheek. “This is the most visible wound, but I came very close to death.” His eyes drifted off into one of his thousand-yard stares, but his feet moved on relentlessly.

I grunted, hoping the noise would remind him to keep talking. The more he spoke, the more I learned. He climbed effortlessly. I sucked in thin air, gritted my teeth, and followed.

“I had already escaped death twice,” he said, “but I was unsure who wanted me dead, or more precisely, who was footing the bill for my extinction. I decided to go into hiding. I flew at night, in a small aircraft, with a few trusted associates. Do you need a hand? The climb is steep here.”

News flash
. “No,” I said. My left calf muscle quivered.

“I have little memory of the flight, even now. They say the mind often experiences a kind of amnesia when the body suffers such an assault. The plane crashed here in the mountains, but I survived.”

My legs churned, left, right, left. I tried not to think about my blistered feet.

“The smallest thing can make a difference,” he said. “The rescue of a butterfly on a mountaintop can save a great whale in the depths of the sea. You understand? They say I died many times. I was badly burned and both my arms were broken. I lay unconscious for nine days. Nine is a holy number for them. The priests, when they are trained, stay in the dark caves for nine long years. For nine months, I was blind. Blindness is akin to holiness for them. They are— Ah, you grow impatient with my tale?”

They
and
them
. Spoken with reverence, the way he'd used the same words in the hut with Cabrera. I think I will have to go to
them
. Perhaps it is time for
them
. The little toe on my left foot throbbed.

“I fell to earth on fire, and they cared for me, not because they knew who I was, not for any reward or favor, but because I was a human being. They treated me with the old medicines, and slowly my burns healed. My arms grew strong. I still have little sight in one eye.”

I was mountain climbing with a half-blind man. As far as I could tell, an unarmed man, except for the formidable machete. Occasionally, his hand went to his woven bag, but the sack seemed to hold nothing but leaves.

“It's rare for them to care for a Younger Brother,” he said. “Mama Parello told me they divined a purpose; they knew we shared a love for the land. They pitied my suffering and my loss. They made me strong
again. They taught me, and now I am their caretaker, as they are the caretakers of us all.”

After the sharp uphill climb, there was rock underfoot, cool breezes, light mist. The trees grew lower to the ground; the bushes, exposed to more sunlight, grew thicker.

What was that supposed to mean? I thought.
The caretakers of us all?

“The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is home to the Kogi,” he said.

“Do you know of
them?”

I only know Paolina is gone
. The path was rock now, dark with slippery moss. The river—I thought it was the same one we'd been following for miles—burbled alongside, plunging headlong down the mountain until it disappeared in the mist.

“The Kogi are the unconquered,” Roldan said.

Good for them
, I thought.

“You need to rest,” he said.

“No.”

“Yes. Your feet bleed.come; sit by the river, on the rocks. There's no shame in it. You climb well,
gringa.”

I made it to the rocks without limping. My legs trembled as I lowered myself to the ground. Roldan knelt by the stream, lowered his head, and drank noisily.

“Can you edge closer,” he asked, “or shall I bring the stream to you?”

I crawled along the rock till I could reach the water and cup it in my hands. I clenched my teeth at the icy chill. It numbed my throat; it tasted like champagne.

The next thing I knew he was kneeling in front of me, carefully removing my sandals. “Lower your feet into the water,” he said. “It will hurt for only a second; then it will help.”

It felt like I'd plunged them into fire, then ice. A soothing numbness rose to my ankles.

“The bottom here is mud,” he said. “Dig your feet into the mud.”

I did as he said, feeling lightheaded and disoriented in the blazing sun.

“Your hair,” he said, “is the color of the angels' hair in a church painting I remember from my childhood. It is a good memory, a gift that you give me.”

The icy water was his gift to me.

“Wiggle your toes in the mud,” he said. “Count to ten, lift them out, and we will see the damage.”

I wanted to leave them there forever.

“Come,” he said. “Lift them. They'll be better soon.”

They emerged filthy and torn, bright red beneath the slimy mud.

“Lean back.”

“I'm fine,” I protested.

“Lean back on your elbows. I'll tell you a story, as though you were a child, and when I'm finished, you'll
see.”

See what? I wondered. The holy spirit? A miracle? Maybe all my blood would ooze out through my feet, turning the river red.

“Once,” he said, and I was so tired, so tired that for a moment he might have been my father beginning an old tale,
once upon a time
, “there was a great civilization here. When Europeans lived in caves, long before the Spanish left their ports, the Tayrona people created here the Garden of Eden. They had fish and salt from the coast and crops from the lowlands. They had abundance and order.
They had gold.”

The Tayrona were in the Gold Museum, people from an ancient time.

His voice was hypnotic, almost a chant. “Gold was valued here,
valued
, but not for what it could buy. It was holy gold, reflecting the glory of the sun. Shamans danced with the holy gold, and it was shaped into gifts for the Great Mother. Gold was the language she understood, because gold was her very bones.”

I thought it might be my Spanish, and then I thought his words might be gibberish in any language, this talk about gold being the bones of the earth. His voice and the sunlight and the touch of his hands on my feet combined to make my eyelids so heavy I could hardly keep them open.