Heart of the World (33 page)

Mooney was right, I thought. The initial searchers had missed a gun. If they'd missed a gun, they could have missed anything. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them wide, determined to overlook nothing even if it meant crawling over every inch of the mountain.

I worked for another fifteen minutes, another half hour, forty-five minutes. Roldan was right; time had no meaning in this place. When I saw the scorched leather folder, I almost walked right past it. Someone had trodden it into the earth. It looked like it belonged, like a line of rock under the soil. I sank to the ground and scrabbled at it with what was left of my fingernails. It had started out tan; it was brown now. It peeled away from the ground, slightly damp.

I pried it gently open, afraid I'd find the tattered remnants of a dollar bill, a worthless itemized receipt, other meaningless debris. Half of a photograph of a dark-haired child; that wasn't going to help. Two thin cards were stuck to one another. I tried to wedge my nails into the crack between them. There: The corner of one chipped off, but they separated into a Florida driver's license and a plasticized badge with a corporate logo. I studied the badge, shielding it from the fierce sun.

A black arrow pierced a blue triangle, the same design I'd last seen tattooed on the arm of the wounded American. The tiny photograph on the badge meant nothing to me, a man's face, nothing more, a name: Sean McIntryre. It was the corporate name that hit me like a sudden slap. BrackenCorp. My lips shaped the name. Drew Naylor rented his huge house from MB Realty Trust, a subsidiary of BrackenCorp. BrackenCorp, the big defense contractor.

BrackenCorp in Miami. BrackenCorp here on the mountain. Pieces of the mosaic shifted in my head.

“Roldan!” My voice carried in the clear thin air. I moved downhill as I spoke, rushing as though I'd never known a blister.

“What is it?”

“The lawyer, Vandenburg. Why didn't you send Paolina's gifts through Vandenburg this time? What were the rumors?”

“What troubles you so?”

“Tell me.”

“Five years ago, Vandenburg was picked up by the DEA.”

“And?”

“That's all. They let him go, but after that, others were detained. You know what I mean?”

He was telling me that Vandenburg was a DEA informant. But if the lawyer was linked to DEA…

The small Kogi priest lifted his arms and rattled off a barrage of incomprehensible sounds. I glanced at Roldan, waiting for translation.

“He says you've had a vision. What does it tell you?”

BrackenCorp in Miami, BrackenCorp on the mountaintop, Brack-enCorp in the camp. The soldier in the hut had to be weaned off opiates and made to talk, made to talk
now
. I wasn't sure why, but my heart was pounding in my chest, and each beat was sending the same message:
Hurry
.

I said, “To get down the mountain, back to the camp. As quickly as possible.”

CHAPTER 30

Going down was faster than going up, but
not much. The stone steps were slippery with moss, and the sloping ground too steep for real speed. I tried to match pace with Roldan but whenever I started to establish a rhythm, the terrain would change, from savanna to woods to heavy jungle undergrowth. My feet felt flayed in spite of their leaf padding and I was afraid I'd twist an ankle, break it if I got unlucky.

I had the sequence of events in Colombia: the crash on the moun-taintop, the long delay before the ransom demand. I considered the order of events in the States, starting with Paolina's disappearance.

I'd gone to Vandenburg, assuming he must be involved. Now it seemed possible he was involved not with Roldan, but with DEA. But he hadn't sent me to Group 26, the DEA branch in Miami; he'd reacted badly when I'd mentioned them. Instead he'd brought me to see Naylor. Naylor, who rented his huge house from BrackenCorp. Naylor, whose stolen phone bill yielded two Bogota numbers, one for the Zona Rosa, a bar from which drugs were dealt, one for the mysterious Base Eighteen. A breeze stirred the foliage, a thin whistle of wind mixed with exotic bird calls and forest chatter.

“Roldan,” I called. “Wait up!

“What is it?”

“Is Base Eighteen DAS?” Maybe Base Eighteen was the Colombian version of Group 26, the anti-drug force.

“It's a division of the regular army, one that is known to cooperate with the private armies, the
autodefensas
, the right-wing paramilitaries. It has a bad reputation. People who are questioned there do not return. Luisa was right about that: I wouldn't want
Dieciocho
to know I'm still alive.”

“Are they involved with drugs?”

“With protecting drug runners, yes. That is the rumor. Luisa would know more.”

“She told me she knew nothing.”

“You're a stranger. She is cautious. With every right to be cautious. Her father investigated Base Eighteen.”

Sweat ran down my back as the air grew warmer.
Her dead father
.

We were maybe three-quarters of the way back when the helicopter buzzed. A flyby, I told myself, an unrelated weather flight, a medical evacuation. Still, I started moving more quickly than the terrain warranted.

“The helicopter, you thought it would come?” Roldan's tone was accusatory.

I shook my head no.

Roldan frowned. “You believe there is urgency? You feel it?”

“I found an ID badge by the dig site. From an outfit called BrackenCorp.”

“So?”

“The same name came up in Florida, when I was trying to get a line on you. It connects to the soldier in the hut.” I gasped out the words, one by one, as we scurried down the path.

His left hand closed on my shoulder. “Here. You must take this. Chew it. It will make the pain less, the going easier.” A ball of leaves from his woven bag nestled in his right palm.

“No.”

“Take it or I'll leave you to follow at your own speed.” He offered the wad of leaves again. “It will not make you crazy. It will not addict you. It's not refined. It is what the Kogi have used forever, to ease hunger, exhaustion, and pain. Keep it in your cheek. Add a little of the lime. It may make your mouth numb, but that will pass.”

If he abandoned me, my chances of finding the encampment were remote. If I didn't find the encampment, I'd never question the soldier,
never find Paolina. I took the ball of leaves and stuck it in the left side of my mouth, between cheek and gum.

“Now take my hand,” he said.

It was a matter of stones across a brook. If I hadn't been exhausted and in pain, I could have managed them easily. His hand was brown and wiry, and I released it the moment I had solid ground beneath my feet, dropped it like it was too hot to touch. Mooney's right about another thing: I'm attracted to outlaws—good-looking, wolf-grinned outlaws— and this was not just an outlaw, but Paolina's father.

The drug was starting to have an effect. I felt calmer, more aware, and my feet no longer troubled me with each step. It was easier to keep my balance. Roldan seemed to be going more slowly, but I knew he wasn't. The change was in me. I was moving more surely, more quickly.

“Tell me of your vision,” Roldan said.

“It was not a
vision.”

“Then why do you feel such urgency? Helicopters have tried to find us before. The canopy of the jungle protects us. We make no fires; we show no signs.”

“After you offered the American in exchange for Paolina, the kidnappers didn't call back. Why?”

He shrugged and kept moving. “At first, I thought because the girl was no longer alive. Therefore they could not bargain.”

I swallowed. The leaves tasted odd, not bitter, not sweet. “I don't believe it.”

“Nor do I. Not any longer. She's frightened, but alive. Mama Parello has seen her in the dream world.”

What a goddamn comfort, I thought. A gnome in a pointed hat has seen her in the dream world.

Roldan said, “If you are worried they might attack to retrieve the wounded American, that is why my people go armed. That is why we moved from one small village to another.”

I was worried
. I said, “Do you hear the copter now?”

“Perhaps they have given up.”

“No,” I said.

“Why do you say this?”

“Because I don't believe in Luisa's theory. I don't believe this is a
conspiracy of governments. I don't know about your government, but mine doesn't steal Indian artifacts.”

“You saw what you saw.”

“The American in the hut doesn't wear dog tags. The men you buried under the rocks had no dog tags. The helicopter had no insignia. What if this is a private thing, a private raid? For the gold.”

“The helicopter is part of the coca eradication plan. That's government.”

“I went to the lawyer, Vandenburg. Vandenburg took me to a man named Naylor. After that I always felt followed, shadowed, by a car, by a presence.” The blue Saturn, the man on the plane.

“No one could have followed you here,” he said.

“There are other ways to track a person.”

“There's a famous story here,” he said, “of Tranquilandia.”

I shook my head; I didn't know it.

“When Colombian government troops discovered the first huge coca processing plant, at Tranquilandia in the southern jungle, it was because the DEA fixed a live transmitter on a barrel of ether.”

A transmitter. The sort of thing that would have been detected during an airport screening…if I'd gone through security.

“My God, who searched my backpack?” I told Roldan about the airport. The woman who'd unpacked and scanned my backpack could have hidden a transmitter. I'd been marched through the airport, bypassing security.

“Only the government could do that,” he said.

Not everyone who works for the government works only for the government, I thought.

“My men would have found it,” Roldan said.

Right. The same team that had left the Beretta on the mountaintop.

I increased my pace and Roldan did too. The path kept crossing the river. More stones, mossy this time. I didn't need Roldan's hand, but his grip was comforting.

He said, “When you spoke to Vandenburg, did he mention a man named Navas?”

My feet felt like they were floating inches off the path. I was no longer tired. I could walk like this forever.

“Did he mention Navas? Or the Angel?”

I shook my head. Angel Navas was Roldan's former partner, jailed for life, dead in prison.

“Naylor,” Roldan said. “What does he look like?”

I described him, reclining on the chaise in the golden room.

Roldan shook his head at the vagueness of my description. “What is the color of his eyes?”

“His hat shaded them, but they were pale. The hair I could see was medium brown. He was heavyset, kind of pudgy. A narrow face, though.” The weight gain could have been recent, I thought.

“Did he walk with a limp?”

“He didn't walk at all, but there was a walking stick, a cane, in the room. Does he seem familiar? Do you know him? He lives in a house owned by BrackenCorp.”

“What is this BrackenCorp?” Roldan asked.

“A defense contractor.”

I no longer concentrated on finding a footfall; my feet seemed to take care of themselves, leaving my mind to speculate. Were the people at the airport DEA? Was the U.S. government using me to find Roldan? It didn't make sense. DEA might bend the rules, but they didn't kidnap children. DEA had no interest in pre-Columbian gold.

Fifteen minutes later, the helicopter buzz sounded again. I couldn't tell if it was the same copter or a second one. It was louder and closer, but the canopy of trees enveloped us. I couldn't see anything above the interlocking branches except a scrap of blue sky. I knew I was walking fast, but it seemed that I was barely moving. I was hurrying, racing, but I had all the time in the world.

Roldan said, “If it's not the government, if it's a private company, they would not wish their activities to be made public. They should have made the deal. Paolina for the wounded man.”

“Yes.”

“But they did not.”

“Maybe the phone is broken.” The ground moved beneath my feet; I didn't feel it.

“The helicopters don't fly here,” he said. “No, they're closing in on the camp, triangulating the signal. There must be a transmitter.”

He redoubled his pace. We followed a different, steeper course than the one we'd ascended, tracing the path of a plunging stream. It took all
my balance, fine-tuned by the coca leaves, to keep from toppling into the rapids. The stream disappeared to the right and soon the trail was nothing but a thin line of footprints through the jungle with an occasional stone for a guidepost.

“I can't wait for you,” Roldan said after fifteen minutes at a furious pace. “And I can't give you my gun. If you meet fighters, hide, and later, someone will come for you.”

Yeah. Right. Friend or foe? Where the hell did he carry a gun?

“Can you throw a knife?” Maybe he saw the question in my eyes.

“It's better than nothing.”

“If I had another weapon, I would give it to you.” I believed him. But I didn't tell him I had a gun.

“Roldan, if you get killed, Paolina will—”

“I'll do my best not to get killed. If it is my day to die, then I will

die.”

He forged ahead, disappearing into a thicket of high bushes. I tried to keep up with him. I tried, but he faded into the trackless jungle. For a little while I could hear his footsteps. Then nothing.

CHAPTER 31

My legs felt like overcooked spaghetti. My feet
told me to sit, to lie down in the lush greenery and sleep, but coca leaves and adrenaline pumped through my veins, and I moved more quickly than I believed possible, stumbling over roots, slipping on mossy outcroppings, falling over stones.

If it is my day to die, then I will die
.