Buried At Sea (36 page)

Shannon screamed, "Jim."

The other security man jumped off the floor like a jack-in-the-box. Jim threw the man he had bear-hugged and the two went down in a heap, just as the waiter rose on one knee, yanking a gun from his cummerbund. Jim dove at him, frantically trying to grab the waiter's hand before he got the gun out. The waiter's wrist was wet and he slipped free, jerking the gun in a wide arc around the ceiling, at Shannon, past-her, into Jim's face. Jim seized his wrist with both hands and bent it back, trying to break it to make him drop the gun. The waiter's arm was like cooked spaghetti. It wouldn't break. It just kept bending and bending and bending until suddenly the gun fired with a dull, quiet thud.

"Jim!"

"I'm . . ." He rose slowly, shakily, and stared at the waiter, who was sinking to the carpet.

"I'm okay. It hit him. It didn't hit me. I'm okay. Are you?"

"Oh my God, Jim. Look at this." The waiter lay gasping for air. The man Jim had bearhugged was sprawled like a bent paper clip.

"Where's the other one?'

"He ran. Look out—"

The bent paper clip was straightening, pulling something black from his jacket. Jim flattened him with the champagne bottle. The man's hand convulsed. A black wallet flipped open as it fell.

Shannon rolled across the bed and snatched up the telephone. "I'll call the police." A gold-and-black badge shone in the light that spilled from the hall. Jim kicked the ice bucket out of the way and closed the door.

"No. Don't call."

"We have to call the police." "They are the police?'

"Will warned me."

Jim was breathing hard, taking the steps two at a time down a utility stairwell. Shannon, as light as a feather on the tenth floor, was getting heavy. "He told me the people who want Sentinel are connected all over the world. I guess he wasn't exaggerating." Shannon was clutching her backpack, her forearm crutches, and the Lonely Planet Guide to Buenos Aires; it listed the U.S. consulate in the Palermo barrio, about five miles to hell and gone across the huge city. The guide cautioned that embassies weren't much help if you were in trouble with the local cops. But it seemed to be their only chance to tell their story to officials who wouldn't slap them around, shoot them, or hand them over to the McVays.

"Why didn't they just arrest us? Why try to trick us?" "Because they're freelancing. It wasn't official. Until one of them got shot. Now it's goddamned official." One flight below the lobby floor he found a corridor reeking of garbage that opened onto a loading dock. The cooks and maids who were taking cigarette breaks watched them curiously.

Sirens sounded in the distance. Jim and Shannon exchanged a look. Fire? Cops? Who knew?

"There's a taxi." Shannon waved it down as Jim hurried them to the street. He got Shannon in one door, then ran around to the other side and hopped in. The driver seemed to understand, "U.S. consulate. Palermo. Por favor."

He drove like a madman through the evening traffic. Jim tried to follow along the Lonely Planet map as they crossed the Retiro barrio, skirted a dark shantytown, and plunged through the Recoleta. He got confused in the Palermo barrio and suddenly they were there, the driver slowing in a traffic jam caused by a dozen police cars blocking the front of the U.S. consulate.

"Oh, shit."

Shannon was quick. "We said, British consulate. U.K. Not U.S. UK" The driver shrugged and turned away.

"Now what?" she asked.

"We'll get out there, and hail another cab."

"Then where?"

"I don't know." If the cops were looking for them at the consulate they'd be watching the airports, too.

Shannon said, "There's a ferry to Uruguay."

"Then what?"

They rode in frightened silence.

At last Shannon asked, "Where's the boat?"

Jim glanced at the driver. God knew if he spoke English. He leaned in close to whisper in her ear, and despite his growing terror, he thought she smelled lovely.

"About a hundred miles downriver. I came in by train." "They'll be at the station."

"We'll rent a car." The boat was low on diesel, but the north wind was still blowing and they could sail out of the Rio de la Plata and into the open Atlantic in half a day and be gone on the limitless sea. Low on diesel, low on water, low on food, but gone. They changed cabs outside the British consulate and told the driver to take them back toward Retiro, where the guidebook said the rental agencies were clustered. Police cars were screaming all over the place. Every traffic cop seemed to stare at the taxi. The driver had an all-talk program blaring on the radio. News? He kept watching them in the mirror. He spoke enough English to ask Shannon, "How you break leg?"

"Acting."

"Como este 'acting'?"

"Stop the car," said Jim.

"No. Retiro."

"Stop."

The guy mumbled, "No entiendo," and kept going, eyes darting, clearly looking for a cop. Jim closed his hand on the driver's shoulder, found the radial nerve, and sent a twinge

traveling down the man's arm into his fingers. The driver pulled over. Shannon paid. They got out on a wide café-lined boulevard beside a park and waited until a raging chorus of horns forced the taxi to move.

"He's going straight to the cops."

Eight lanes of traffic roared, the speeding cars and trucks spewing exhaust fumes as thick as cigarette smoke in a sports bar. Crowds of people hurried along the narrow sidewalk, shouting conversations over the thunder of a big jet roaring in the sky. Jim oriented himself by it. Jorge Newbery, the domestic airport, was on the river. He wanted to wait until the cab had disappeared in the dense traffic. People were watching from the cafés. He reached for Shannon to pick her up again. She stopped him.

"We're too conspicuous. Let me use the crutches:'

"It's too slow."

Balancing herself on one crutch, she struggled into her backpack. "I'll get myself to the third café. Go the other way and find another cab." She hobbled off. It beat standing there waiting for the cops.

When he looked back, he saw that Shannon had stopped to buy something from a street vendor: a hat to cover her blond hair. Because the city was so dense with cars and pedestrians, within a hundred yards he was out of sight of anyone who had seen them get out of the cab together.

He was looking for another cab, when down the gentle hill of the park he saw bicycles gliding past statues and a Ferris wheel. He hurried down the littered grass slope to a newly paved bicycle path. A signpost indicated that it led back to the city center at Retiro. The third rider he called to spoke English. The nearby Velodrome had a rental kiosk, she told him. And there he got lucky.

Shannon was sitting at an outside table, watching the road for taxis, so Jim saw her first. The exhaustion on her face tore at his heart. She had covered nearly two hundred yards on the crutches, a brutal haul. But her face lighted with relief when she saw him pedaling toward her, and she gave him such a big smile that for a second he could believe that they were just lovers on vacation.

"You genius. A bicycle built for two."

He helped her onto the front seat, got her feet on the pedals, and strapped her crutches alongside her backpack. Then, with a running start, he pedaled onto a red crushed-brick walk that led to the bisisenda.

The flat path was easy going for a couple of miles, though Jim was soon sweating in the humid heat. "I'm thinking our best bet might be to ride straight through out of the city to the next town and to try to catch the train there."

"How far?"

"I don't know. Twenty miles. Piece of cake on these flats. Maybe we should ride right to the boat. The bike's got a light. I could do it."

"That sign says FIN BISISENDA. I think that means the end." Jim stood up on the pedals to see farther. "No, there's a big fancy building up ahead. Some kind of museum. If we run out of bike path we can get on the road." He pedaled past the FIN BISISENDA sign, down a slight incline, and under some massive brick arches that supported a railroad track. A commuter train was rumbling overhead. When he emerged from the arches, the bike path petered out and they were quite suddenly out of the green park and on a narrow, rutted dirt road that entered a neighborhood of low brick houses.

Ahead and off to the right he could see modern high-rises poking above the houses. But the road zigzagged and the houses, which stood cheek to jowl, began to squeeze it hard.

"Wait a minute. What the hell is this?"

Shannon said, "Wow. It's like we're not in Europe anymore." She was right, Jim realized. Until this moment, as Will had predicted, Buenos Aires had felt like a European city, exclusively white, with nary a black or an Indian. Here, the people staring at them exhibited none of the lively gestures of the ebullient porteños and looked totally different from anyone they'd seen so far—smaller, darker, and dressed in rags.

Jim steered around a pile of garbage and dodged a heap of scrap wood studded with nails. Around a sharp bend he

found the way partially blocked by burning garbage. He pedaled around the smoke and wove a path through people pushing rusted shopping carts.

"Jim, I think we should get out of here."

He took the next turn, to the right, which should have brought them back to the center city. But the street grew narrower still and the houses had turned to shacks made of corrugated metal and scrap lumber. The bike was too long to turn around. Another bend brought them to a halt on a lane of cardboard and flapping plastic. A trench down the middle of the lane overflowed with sewage. Jim stepped off the bike and walked it, looking for a turnoff. A child in ripped jeans and a dirty T-shirt darted from a slot between two plastic-covered crates. He shook a torn paper cup in Jim's face.

"I have change," said Shannon. "They want money—hey!" she shouted as another child—as tiny as a six-yearold—tugged at her backpack. "Let go!" Jim pushed the kid away. The child was so skinny that he felt his palm brush bone. In an instant they were surrounded by ragged children who were reaching for their packs and grabbing at their pockets.

The children were so silent that Jim and Shannon could hear the distant whine of another train. Jim saw a flash of steel, then felt something sting his thigh. When he looked down he saw that they'd slashed right through his pocket. A walnut-sized fist emerged from the cloth, stuffed with money.

They were grabbing the bike, dragging it with Shannon still on the seat. He shoved through the swarm of arms and pulled her off. The bike slid away and vanished. Jim backed against a wall, gripping Shannon in the crook of his left arm and fending off the silent, swarming children with his right.

A ten-year-old grabbed one of Shannon's crutches. Without them she was helpless, and Jim felt her erupt into a torrent of frightened muscle. She thrust the other crutch like a cue stick and the kid let go and fell back, holding his eye.

He saw steel flash again—a box cutter. He struck first and

was appalled to see an eighty-pound child go flying. Two more took its place. Jim whipped off his backpack. "Give them your stuff."

Before the hand could close on his pack, the children scattered, melting away into holes and slots and over low walls. Six teenagers, as silent as the children, stood staring at Jim and Shannon. Five held knives. The sixth had a pistol: he gestured with it for them to follow.

The group moved around them and Jim had no choice but to swing Shannon into his arms and walk with them through the maze of narrow streets and muddy lanes that stank of sewage. Shannon whispered, "What is happening?"

"I don't know."

They stopped in front of a brick house with a second story made of wood. The leader knocked and the door opened instantly. He gestured again with the gun. Jim had to turn sideways to fit through the narrow door with Shannon. It closed behind. A match flared, and an oil lamp was lit.

They went through a series of rooms and narrow doorways, up some steps and down again, descending finally into a dank cellar—a low-ceilinged room crowded with children. In the glare of several oil lamps, they saw a broad, squat man sitting at a plank table.

Jim felt Shannon shudder. The man's face was grotesquely scarred. Burns had seared his flesh and left patches of hair on shiny skin. He had no eyebrows, and, Jim realized with a twisting stomach, no ears. His legs appeared to be curled under him. One arm was a withered claw. The other, gracefully muscled, with a fine, long hand, seemed to be the final remnant of a once strong and handsome man.

His milky left eye was blind. The other flicked from Shannon to Jim and back to Shannon's crutches. Then he crossed his heart with his good hand, smacked the table, and announced with a childlike glee: "Word of an Englishman! You found them." WELCOME. SHANNON. WELCOME. Jim. Thank you, Mother Mary." He snapped his fingers. "Tell Eduardo we have them." Two boys hurried out. The children—a dozen or more—crowded closer.

"Who," asked Shannon, "is Eduardo?"

"Eduardo, pretty woman, is my negotiator. My agent. He will help set the price."

"Of what?" asked Jim.

"Of the famous Jim and Shannon everyone is looking for."

"You're going to turn us in to the police?"

"Policia? No, my muscled friend. The policia beat us and shoot us. They do not pay us."

"Who?"

"Put your pretty woman down, muscle man. Your arms must be tired. We'll bring her a chair. It is hard to stand on crutches, is it not?" He pointed at his useless legs. They brought a cracked plastic kitchen chair and Jim lowered Shannon onto it as the mutilated man watched. She and Jim exchanged looks of fear and confusion. He was racking his brain, wondering if they could buy their way out

of this with the gold Krugerrands in his pack, or those still on the boat, when Shannon broke the silence.

"Your English is excellent. Where did you learn it?"

"I was born Brazilian. When Portuguese is your native language, you are wise to learn new tongues." He looked down at his shriveled body. "My nurse spoke English—a nun. She taught me how to read, too. Which, you know, comes in handy when you are '