The Descent From Truth (3 page)

He heated a half-cup of water and mixed in coffee lightener, laced it with sugar, and stirred it into the gooey oatmeal. “Maybe he’ll like it this way.”

Pia tried coaxing a bite into the baby’s mouth. He refused to taste it.

“Let me have a shot.” Alex turned his back and transferred the thinned, sweetened oatmeal into a bowl of a different size and color. “Freddy, look what I’ve got.” Moving the oatmeal-laden spoon in a circuitous route, first toward his own mouth, then toward the baby’s, he always stopped short of contact. Finally, when it was inches from his mouth, Alex lunged and wrapped his lips around the spoon. He pulled it back and turned it to show that it was empty. “Yummy.” He smacked his lips.

Childish laughter filled the kitchen.

Zigging and zagging, the refilled spoon approached the baby’s mouth. He latched on to gulp the sugary oatmeal, and his face registered pleasant surprise.

Over and over Alex repeated the game. Each time, he moved the spoon in a seemingly aimless path that ended at the baby’s mouth.

“He likes you,” Pia said. “He does not usually take to people.”

“I have no trouble with kids. It’s their mothers who can’t stand me.”

“I do not believe that.” She beamed him a high-wattage smile.

Lunging forward, the baby dipped his hand into the oatmeal. He extended it to her. “Pee,” he shouted. “Pee.”

“Your turn,” Alex said. He mimed spooning oatmeal into Pia’s mouth. When he saw how hilarious the baby found this, he began alternating between mother and child with the gyrating spoon. “So you’re from Colombia,” he said as he coaxed more oatmeal into the baby’s mouth. “What part?”

“Amazonas Province.”

“You grew up in the Amazon rain forest?

“I did not grow up there. It is merely where I was born. My mother died when I was very young, and we—my father and I—moved to Belén, a small town in Peru. It is only a short distance from Iquitos.”

Alex remembered Iquitos from his time in Peru. He’d been told it was the world’s largest city that could not be reached by road. “Was your father Peruvian?”

“He was British, trained as an Army officer. He was wounded early in his career and separated from the Army. A group of rebel fighters along the border between Colombia and Peru hired him to manage their supplies.”

“What about your mother?”

“She was an Amazonian aborigine.”

“You’re Colombian by birth, British by parentage, and Peruvian by residence?”

Another smile. “I am not a citizen of any country. My birth was never registered.”

Three mysteries solved: her unusual facial features, her command of English, and her intriguing accent. “Without a birth record, how’d you get a passport and visa?”

A moment of pursed-lip silence. “My employer has influence.”

“You say your father
ran
a depot. He no longer does that?”

“He died. A little over three years ago.” She stood and hefted the baby onto her hip. “He will nap now.” She headed for the bedroom.

Alex carried the battery outside and reconnected it to the generator. He started the engine, let it warm up, and switched the power on-line. Back inside, he fiddled with the television’s channel selector, experimenting until shadowy images appeared on the screen and solidified.

Pia walked in from the bedroom and paused, looking startled. “The television works?”

“Yeah, place has its own generator. Thought I’d check the weather.” Alex clicked the channel selector button until The Weather Channel appeared. An announcer described national conditions while a script along the screen’s bottom promised a local report on the quarter-hour, another five minutes. Alex switched to CNN.

Pia walked between him and the set, blocking his view. “May we watch something else?”

“Don’t you want to know what’s going on?”

“We have enough problems of our own. No need to hear those of other people.”

“I’ve been out here a while. I’d like to know what kind of world I’m going back to.”

She circled him to stand behind the couch, outside of his field of vision. “Alex,” she said.

Twisting around, he faced away from the television to look at her.

“I haven’t properly thanked you for saving us.” Staring at him, she toyed with the belt that secured the wrap-around robe. Her tongue flicked over her lips. “I would like to do so now.” With a lazy smile, she tugged at the robe’s lapels to expose the swell of her breasts as she backed through the door into the kitchen.

She was coming on to him? And she wanted to do it in the kitchen, when the couch was convenient and warmed by the fire? This woman had some really strange circuitry. Nevertheless, he pushed off the couch and headed for her, a magnet drawn to a lodestone. “What about Freddy?”

“He will sleep for at least an hour.” She untied the belt. Only her hand held the robe together.

The television news-anchor said something about Peru and a missing limousine. Staring at Pia, Alex barely heard.

She licked her lips again, dropped her hands to her sides, and shrugged. The robe became a circle of fabric around her sock-clad feet.

“Colorado law enforcement authorities have pledged full cooperation,” the newscaster said. His words registered in Alex’s consciousness as a message from a far planet. “The governor is . . .” Caressing a naked shoulder, his finger tracing a breast to its tip, Alex lost the newscaster’s words.

Pia stood with her head tilted back, her eyes closed, her lips parted. Passively receptive, she remained still while Alex tasted her neck, while his hands explored her back, her buttocks, her belly. So smooth. Firm yet soft.

A shift in the newscaster’s inflection made his words intrusive: “He’s leaving the hotel now with Maximillian Koenig.”

Koenig? The name pulled Alex from of his erotic haze. Twisting, he shifted so he could see the screen.

Two men were walking out of Denver’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The camera zoomed in on an elderly man’s stern, hawk-nosed visage. The announcer identified him as Maximillian Koenig, a confidant to Peru’s president and a major source of the ruling party’s financial clout.

“The child has been missing for twenty-four hours,” the newscaster said. A photo of Freddy, a studio portrait from the looks of it, filled the screen. “Little Frederick Koenig, twelve months old, is his parents’ only child.”

Chapter 4

Pia’s jaw sagged and her eyes seemed to lose focus when the television newscaster’s mention of Maximillian Koenig caused Alex to pull away from her. At the reference to the kid belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Koenig, she looked as if she was going to collapse. She stood with her head bowed, her arms at her sides, the inert folds of her robe covering her feet.

The television said something about record-breaking low temperatures in the Rockies. Keeping his eyes on Pia, Alex fumbled for the remote and turned down the volume. “Your baby, huh?” Anger made his voice unsteady. Anger at himself for being so easily duped, anger at Pia for betraying his perception of her.

She picked up her robe. “It is not what you think.”

“Yeah? What am I thinking?”

“You suspect that I . . .” She slipped on the robe and cinched it around her waist. “You have seen me feeding him. I am his nanny and wet nurse.”

Whining from the bedroom signaled the end of Frederick’s nap. Pia went there and returned with him riding her hip. “If I am being deceitful, how is it that he knows me? You have heard him try to say my name. It is the only real word he knows.”

“Why did you pretend to be his mother?”

“I did not know you. Should I have told you that Peru’s wealthiest child had fallen into your hands? That you were the only person on earth who knew his whereabouts?”

“Tell me what happened. No more lies.”

“It is exactly as I said. We were on our way to the Silver Hill Ski Resort. We hit ice and went over an embankment.”

“You weren’t alone.”

“No, but the driver and our bodyguard died in the crash.”

“They both died, and you two weren’t even injured?”

“It was a limousine. We were in the back, wearing seat belts. They were in front and unbelted.”

The baby began squirming. She set him on the floor near the fireplace, checked to make sure its protective screen was secure, and gave him a big wooden spoon and several pans and lids from the kitchen as toys. When he looked content, she stood and turned once again to Alex. “What more would you like to know?”

“What about Freddy’s parents? Why weren’t they in the limo with him?”

“They are traveling to Silver Hill by helicopter. The machines, their noise and vibration, terrify Frederick.”

“I found you a long way off the road.”

“I heard engine noise—I told you that. I walked in the direction of the sound and lost my way.”

As she answered his questions, Alex looked for signs of deceit. Liars, he had learned in Special Forces training, are likely to have facial expressions—tics, furrows, smiles, frowns, and so forth—that are stiff and fleeting as they struggle to control them. He saw none of that, and Pia did not avoid eye contact the way people who are making things up often do. Either she was telling the truth, or she had learned to lie convincingly.

Frederick knew where to go for his milk, so that part of her story was obviously true. But there was the mystery of Alex’s missing phone. And the woman had demonstrated her acting talent when she convinced him she was the boy’s mother.

She glanced at the couch, back at Alex. “Must we continue standing?”

“Of course not.” Alex waited a moment, expecting her to sit. She also waited, so he plopped down on one end of the couch.

She sat on the floor close to Frederick, her back resting against the couch’s arm. “I’m sorry about lying to you,” she said.

“You were doing your job. Thought you were protecting Freddy.”

A smile chased away her hangdog expression. “Does that mean you believe me?”

“Means I’m trying to. Has he been . . . have you been feeding him since he was born?”

“He was a week old. His mother could not breast-feed, and he was intolerant of substitutes for mother’s milk. I had recently lost my baby, so they hired me as a wet nurse. We got on so well that they also let me be his nanny.”

If that was the truth, it had to be tough. Every time the kid nursed, she would be reminded of her own loss. “What’s it like, working for the Koenigs?”

If she wanted to mask her emotions, she would have to shield her eyes. They brightened with happy thoughts and dulled with sadness. As she considered his question, they dimmed. “I am grateful. I have not always been what they wanted, but they let me stay.”

“Tell me about Koenig. What sort of man is he?”

“He is . . .” She seemed to search for words. “Mr. Koenig is detached. He has no interest in anything other than business.”

“What about his wife? What’s she like?”

“Madam Koenig is from one of Lima’s best families. Before her father was accused of political misconduct, they were the closest Peru had to royalty. She is curious about people. About their reactions to . . . to stressful situations. She is not someone you would want to anger.”

“What you told me about your parents, about your father soldiering for rebels. Was that straight?”

“I lied only about Frederick.”

Hearing his name, Frederick abandoned his pot-and-pan toys and crawled to her. He grabbed her robe and pulled. She stood him between her outstretched legs, steadied him by holding his hands, and let him bounce in place.

Alex studied her profile for a moment. “How’d you get from the sticks to the bright lights?”

She looked puzzled. “Sticks and lights?”

“To Lima from the Amazon jungle. How’d you get there?”

“A man brought me.”

He let that go. On the television, a talking head pointed to a map of Western Colorado. The report had gone full cycle; the local weather was on again. Alex turned up the audio.

“. . . moving across the Continental Divide.” The weatherman’s hand slid over the map. “The fast-moving storm will cross over to the eastern slope of the Rockies during the night.”

Alex studied the televised weather map. With the storm dissipated, he would be able to hike out in the morning. By then, he had to decide: trust Pia and leave Frederick with her, or take them with him? She’d never make it across the Warrior River Gorge, and a two- or three-day trek to the highway via the bridge would be hard on her and the boy.

Relax and watch the two of them together, he decided. Try to decide how much of what she had told him was true.

* * *

By evening, if Pia hadn’t admitted it wasn’t so, Alex would have believed she really was Frederick’s mother. Their frequent, loving touches, the looks and gestures that were subliminal communication, reminded him of his own mother.

Beyond that, he
wanted
to believe. Little by little, as he let his guard down, he found increasing pleasure in Pia’s company. Her amateurish seduction ploy had worked only because of his pathetic eagerness. She didn’t seem sophisticated enough to have been trained in the art of deception.

They collaborated in the kitchen, cooking dinner. Alex thawed a steak and converted it into two thin ones by sawing it horizontally with his knife. He dropped the skinny slabs into a skillet coated with sizzling vegetable oil. Pia, holding Frederick with one arm, suspended frozen bread slices on a fork and held them over the cook stove’s gas flame until they turned golden brown. Alex slathered the thin steaks with spicy mustard and sandwiched them in the toast while Pia stirred Tang into glasses of melted snow. They carried the sandwiches and drinks into the living room and set them on the coffee table by the fire.

Midway through the meal, Alex made his decision. “I’ll head out first thing in the morning. If no one comes for you right away, stay put. There’s plenty of firewood, enough food in the cabin for several days.”

They finished eating and cleaned the dishes. Pia settled on the couch to nurse Frederick, and Alex turned on the television. He tuned in a Denver station, a local news show.

The newscaster summarized speculation about Variant Corporation’s plans for Colorado Land and Cattle Company. One source maintained that the corporation was building a toxic waste dump, another that they were reviving efforts to extract oil from shale. “One thing is certain,” the newscaster said. “They have built a landing strip large enough to accommodate executive jets. Well-heeled guests will be able to fly to within ten miles of Silver Hill Ski Resort.”

The station ran an aerial film clip of the new runway, and the announcer’s face again filled the screen. “When we come back, we’ll have more news on the disappearance of little Frederick Koenig, the only child of Variant Corporation’s multibillionaire owner.” The screen faded into a commercial: Mad Marvin’s used cars could be had with only a hundred dollars down. “We tote the note.”

Pia stood and hoisted Frederick onto her hip. “He is ready for bed. I will diaper him in the kitchen.”

Alex nodded and turned back to the television. Mad Marvin surrendered the screen to an aging actor who explained the unique merits of his denture adhesive. A skinny waitress compared an expensive brand of paper towels with an off-brand, demonstrating why consumers should pay the premium. Then the newscaster’s image reappeared. “Searchers have found the limousine that carried the Koenig child. It appears to have skidded off a back road to Silver Hill Ski Resort, its reported destination. A bodyguard is injured, the driver is dead. The child and his nanny are still missing.”

The bodyguard only injured? According to Pia, both men had been killed. Alex turned up the volume.

Yesterday’s filmstrip of the Koenigs strolling along Denver’s Cherry Creek, followed by Frederick and his nanny and flanked by bodyguards, ran again. “Authorities suspect the child has been kidnapped. The investigation is focusing on this woman.” The camera zoomed in for a close-up, highlighting the nanny’s face. It was unmistakably Pia.