Heart of the World (36 page)

She tried to breathe normally, tried to picture the plastic Darth Vader mask her little brother sometimes wore, the gadget that made his voice so laughably like the movie voice, but the Voice wasn't like that at all. The Voice made shivers run up and down her spine. The Voice was terrifying.

“Talk,” commanded the Voice. Then there was a click of machinery, like a tape recorder turning on or off.

“Daddy?

“Who is this?”

Was that her father's voice, so deep and sad, so melodic?

“I'm Marta's daughter, your daughter. Dad, don't do what they
—
“
A hand closed on her arm, above her elbow.

“Where are you, child?”

The pressure on her arm increased.
“I ran away. I ran. I tried. They caught me.”

“You are very brave,
chica.”

The hand grasping her arm dug in like pincers. She could feel short blunt fingernails. Pain.

Click. “Tell him,” the Voice ordered. Then another click.

“Daddy, they say they'll kill me if you don't do exactly what they say.”

The phone at her ear was snatched away, and now it was soap-smelling Ana who was holding her, murmuring
hush, hush
, finally clamping a hand across her mouth while the tape-recorder-sound clicked again.

With the phone no longer at her ear, she heard the Voice with no mechanical alteration.

“We have both the American and the girl,” it said. “We won't risk another helicopter.”

A pause. Her father must be speaking. What would he say?

The Voice again: “Now you will bring us the gold.”

Gold? she thought.
Gold? Like Julio?

“Cartagena,” the Voice said.

Cartagena was a city on the Caribbean coast; she knew that. Was she in Cartagena now? There was no smell of the sea, no sound of waves.

“San Felipe,” the Voice went on.

She didn't know what that was. Or where. All she knew was that the Voice, with or without mechanical alteration, was one of the spookiest sounds she'd ever heard, a hollow whisper, level and cold.

“No one else. You. You will come alone,” the Voice said, “or she dies.”

“Let me talk,”
she yelled.
“Daddy! Daddy! They'll kill
—
“
But then Ana's arms were shoving her down, holding her while she screamed. The trunk slammed shut and she was alone in the dark again.

CHAPTER 33

Hot
. I was a huge day jar, like
one of the pottery urns that lay shattered on the mountaintop, stuck in a fiery kiln. My neck burned, my sides baked, my arms blistered. My eyes opened, then squeezed themselves quickly shut. Who the hell had turned off the air conditioning? How had I managed to fall asleep and what dreadful dream had woken me with such urgency? I swung my legs over the edge of a hard bed and rested my head in my hands, fists against eye sockets to block the glare from the tiny window. Nothing blocked the sticky heat. I kicked the sheet away from my damp body. I was sweating, seated on a narrow daybed in a stuffy room, wearing what seemed to be a man's bathrobe. Disoriented and woozy, as though I'd unexpectedly fallen asleep in a movie theater.

How much of the wooziness was the residue of coca leaves? I was thirsty, but not hungry. I was not an urn, not on fire; it wasn't the threat of flames that had woken me. It was a voice within the fire, a machinelike voice similar to the one Roldan had described, the voice on the sat phone. There'd been a mechanical voice in my dream, trying to tell me…what? It was important, but gone, and I couldn't tease it back.

Other, more recent, snippets of conversation tickled my memory: Roldan's voice explaining that siesta was the custom of the country people, that he wished to keep to the custom to discourage gossip, that we were safe here. This place, this farmhouse near Baranquilla, was part of a lowland plantation belonging to the Cabrera family, to Luisa's uncle
Gilberto, a former member of the Colombian senate, a man Roldan seemed to trust. Cabrera's family would shelter us, temporarily at least, to repay Roldan for bringing her body home.

A quick light knock on the door was followed swiftly by the creak of hinges, and a small woman of fifty, wearing a white blouse, a dark skirt, and carrying a tray with a pitcher of orangey-pink liquid and two crystal-clear glasses. She set the tray on a small table, wished me a pleasant afternoon, and informed me that my clothes were now dry. Would I like them brought in?

I thanked her and told her I would. She was so obviously a servant that I hesitated to ask for further information although I craved facts even more than I craved the sparkling glass of juice she poured and offered. I wanted to know how I'd wound up in this tiny room, who'd undressed me and swiped my clothes, why she'd brought two glasses instead of one; but as soon as my hand closed around the glass, before I could frame a single query, she pivoted and disappeared, closing the door soundlessly behind her.

The glass was beaded with icy drops. I wiped the condensation across the back of my neck, sipped the drink, then pressed the cool glass to my forehead. The juice wasn't
lulo;
it was a blend of several flavors, including mango.

The last time I'd flown across Colombia, from Bogota to the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, I'd been drugged into unconsciousness. I'd been awake this time, but the morning had passed like a dream, the rushed journey down the mountainside, the takeoff, the flight, the landing on the bumpy strip that passed for a runway. I'd been grateful for the intense heat as I jumped from the door of the plane to the ground, grateful for any sensation whatsoever, because the tiny plane had been rusty and wobbly, the pilot either drunk or a show-off, and I'd spent the past hour hanging onto the handgrips, praying the damned thing would stay airborne. Roldan, mid-flight, had mentioned that the Cessna reminded him of the one that had crashed years ago in the mountains. We'd flown so low, avoiding radar, that it seemed we'd be landing any minute, diving unscheduled into blue Caribbean waters.

The maid entered with a stack of freshly laundered clothes. When I asked her name, she flushed.

“Amalia, Senorita.”

She set the pile on the daybed, placed a small jar of cream on the table, and explained that the Senor recommended it for my feet. Also, the Senor wished me to know I could feel free to use the telephone. When I thanked her, she scooted out the door.

Telephone
. Was there an unseen phone in this closet? Hiding places were limited. I found it in the only possible location, a wooden built-in cupboard. As I lifted the receiver, I thought: Would the Senor be listening in on my call? Then I thought: What the hell did it matter? I dialed Gloria.

“Damn, this better be good. You better have one fine excuse for not calling. You find her? You okay? Sam and Mooney been driving me nuts, calling all the time, Where is she? Where is she? This better be damned good.”

I filled her in, making a bare-bones job of it, letting her know my phone silence hadn't been a matter of choice. She thawed and responded with an update on Drew Naylor.

“Mooney can't trace him back more than two, three years. Might have changed his name. Lotta movie-type guys do that.”

It seemed like I'd asked about Naylor years ago rather than days. I closed my eyes and shifted mental gears, made myself remember. Naylor produced commercial films. Actors changed their names, yes. Not producers of commercial shorts. “Keep digging,” I said. “Has the man ever been injured? Does he limp?”

“I don't know. Don't have it here.”

“Get it. Did Roz give you more stuff on BrackenCorp?”

She made a noncommittal noise before coming up with the goods. “Okay, first of all, they were recently taken over by this huge company called GSC, initials standing for nothing, far as she can tell. GSC: founded in ‘59; it's got eighty-nine thousand employees, FY04 revenue: 16.8 billion, Fortune 500.” She rattled off more numbers, but I didn't find them enlightening.

“What do they do?”

“Risk analysis, knowledge management, security services. BrackenCorp was big, too; forty thousand employees before they swallowed it. Word is GSC wanted their government biz. BrackenCorp did over six billion in federal contracts, but they had a pile of debt. Good write-off for GSC. Solid acquisition.”

“What did BrackenCorp do for the government?”

“Aviation services, base operations, logistics support services, something called range tech services.”

“Go back to logistics support. What's that cover?”

“Okay,” she said, “Once upon a time, the U.S. Army did its own thing. Fed its own people, handled its own communications, built its own barracks, did its own laundry, but then the government decided to privatize. Now there's what they call a ‘partnership' between the armed forces and a select group of private companies.”

“Who selected them?”

“That's a story in itself. Quite a few of the CEOs used to be in the government, cabinet positions, undersecretaries of this and that. Like Mark Bracken. But it doesn't work out that badly costwise, government spending being what it is.”

Yeah, I thought, and what about accountability?

“It's like outsourcing,” she went on. “You know? You hire somebody from the outside, you streamline your operation.”

“The army outsources logistical support.”

She made a clicking noise with her tongue. “They go farther than that.”

Bingo. “Does BrackenCorp happen to fly defoliation missions in Colombia?”

Her “Humph” was eloquent. It said, “Why'd you get Roz to research this shit if you already know it?” I thought, if BrackenCorp was already flying security for government-sanctioned defoliation missions, they could have ordered one or two of their copters to take a “wrong turn” in the fog, get lost for a few hours, carry out a clandestine mission.

I said, “Do they provide actual troops?”

“They call them ‘security specialists.' Lots of ex—special ops guys.”

“Security specialist” sounded one hell of a lot better than “mercenary.” It sounded like a term devised to keep legislators calm and happy.

“What if these civilians get themselves killed in a firefight? Does the body count get reported to Congress?” I asked.

“Got me,” Gloria said. “But this privatization ain't new, babe. World War One, the French army took cabs to the front.”

Trust Gloria to know something like that. She was probably hoping for a contract to handle future foreign entanglements.

“Bracken,” I said. “What about him?” Click.
Will Mark Bracken be fired?
That was where I'd heard the name BrackenCorp, on a radio news broadcast, something about corporate takeovers.

“Mark Nathaniel Bracken. Yale, ‘67. Skull and Bones. Department of Agriculture, a little time in Justice, Undersecretary of Defense, more administrations than you can count, Republican and Democratic both. Went private in the early nineties, made a mint.”

“Is he interested in gold?”

“Christ, Carlotta, I'm interested in gold. Who the hell isn't interested in gold?”

“He's in danger of being fired, right? Because of this GSC thing?”

“Guys like that don't get fired. They get bumped up, moved over, maybe eased out with a golden parachute.”

“Who owns GSC?” I asked.

Papers rustled. “Don't have it.”

“Find it. Get Roz on it, and if she can't make a connection to gold at GSC, have her start looking at the other end. Find gold collectors, antique gold, pre-Columbian gold, and see who's got a BrackenCorp or GSC connection.”

“Okay. Now talk to me some more. You said you heard from Paolina?”

I hesitated. “Roldan did. She's alive.”
According to him
. I was upset that he hadn't let me speak to her; I knew her voice better than I knew my own.

“You bring her home soon, hear?”

“I'll bring her home.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. It was the same expression Roldan had used about Cabrera, about her body, bringing her home.

“You be careful,” Gloria said. “Don't you mess up my big chance to be a bridesmaid.”

I felt my face grow warm. “Gloria, dammit, Sam shouldn't have told you. I haven't decided.”

“Are you up?” Roldan's voice preceded a knock at the door.

“Tell him yes, girl. Man cares about you. Think you'd get that through your thick skull.”

“How is Sam? Where is he?” The questions came in a rush, in a single breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. I was worried about the
man, dammit. Maybe the metallic voice in my dream had been trying to tell me something about Sam.

“He's worried about you. I don't know where he is, but last time he called he said if I heard from you, tell you to call Ignacio right away. Call him now.”

“Carlotta?” Roldan again, insistent.

“I'm hanging up now, Gloria. Goodbye.”

I ought to do it, I thought. Marry Sam. Just for the vision of Gloria rolling down the aisle in one of those frou-frou bridesmaid gowns designed for girls shaped like toothpicks. The image forced a smile.

When Roldan entered the room, he made it seem smaller. He'd left his white Kogi garb at the camp, along with his mantle of responsibility and his thousand-yard stare. He seemed more human in faded jeans and a white tee under an unbuttoned blue linen shirt. As he glanced around the room, the corners of his wide mouth lifted in amusement.

He said, “Just the basics here: a woman and a bed. We could use a little music.”

“I must have gone out like a light,” I said. In civilian garb, Roldan made me think of Sam. Maybe it was the faint tang of shaving lotion. Or maybe it was just that Sam was on my mind.

He nodded at the phone. “Your friends know you're safe? Good. How are your feet? You used the cream?”

“Not yet.”