Heart of the World (40 page)

Roldan moved into a rare patch of shade.

“You are happy?” he said.

“I will be.” Once we get Paolina back. “How much longer?”

“There could be others. Let's give all of them a chance to see us.”

“Right. What else have we got to do?”

Roldan cracked a smile. He knew how little I wanted to stand there baking like bread in an oven, how many other tasks loomed. But if this didn't work, it was more than possible that nothing else would.

We inspected the exterior of the strong-room in the center of the courtyard. I imagined Spanish troops fighting here, battling with heavy swords and muskets, yielding ground reluctantly, step by bloody step. Soldiers must have dropped dead from the heat.

“Here they lined up the pirates for execution. See the bullet holes in this wall.” Roldan didn't seem undone by the heat. “You spent an interesting night?”

I nodded.

“Your man, he seems like a good catch. Gianelli, it's Italian, no?”

“Yes.”

“Mafia?”

“Like you're a drug dealer.”

Roldan nodded. “I see. There is some complexity, and also I should not be one to call names. Ignacio and the others respect him, but do they fear him? Is he ruthless?”

He used the Spanish word
inhumano;
it gave me pause.

“He'll do what has to be done,” I said finally.

“The others, too, seem like good people.”

“Good” was not the right word; Ignacio's people seemed qualified. They seemed competent. They were hired guns. How much of what they did they did for money, how much for loyalty, how much for pleasure or any of a thousand other motivations, I had no way of knowing.

“Do you trust them?” I asked.

“Many choices have been made for me. I must trust them, it seems.”

The pavement baked in the sun, and sweat trickled down my back. The more I saw of the Fort of San Felipe, the more essential it seemed to find Paolina before the scheduled trade-off of gold for girl. Ignacio was right; it was a bad place. Exposed. There was no area out of sight of the battlements, no shelter from guards who could easily be stationed there. It would be like conducting business in a prison exercise yard, under constant armed watch. Roldan would walk in, but not out. And Paolina—

I remembered Roldan's description of Navas's capture by the army,
his wife and baby son killed before his eyes. I had no faith in the supposed compassion of women. It was possible this Ana wanted Roldan to undergo the same torment she imagined her lover had experienced before his capture.

“Where are they more likely to keep her, the farm or the apartment?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“If you had to guess.”

“The apartment is closer to the fort. That area, the part of the city called San Diego, is one where people come and go, eating in the restaurants, drinking in the bars.”

“Either way, we'll have to move tonight.”

“Maybe you should stay out of it. You're not unnoticeable, with that hair and—”

“I'm being deliberately noticeable, Roldan, that's why you're talking about it. Trust me, I've worked undercover before. Wait till you see me as a man.”

“I look forward to it.” He was fairly flamboyant in appearance as well, his red shirt tucked neatly into black pants, his sombrero made of dyed straw, white with a red and yellow pattern around the brim. “More though,” he went on, “I'd like to see you as a woman.”

“A woman engaged to be married.”

“That is not what I meant. Truly, I expected you to weep when you saw this man, to weaken somehow, to cede authority to him.”

“After we rescue Paolina, after she's safe, I'll cry for a week.”

He nodded.

“What about you?” I asked.

“Me? I would like very much…” His voice slowed and stopped.

“What?”

“I would like to walk the mountain with my child. I would like to show her the lost city, the
nihue
where I study, the snow on the mountaintop, and the mist.”

She'd go in a flash, at the faintest hint of an invitation, I thought. To walk with her father, listen to the eerie music of the Kogi pipes. I felt a stab of jealousy.

“But we will see,” Roldan said. “This man, Gianelli, he is fond of my daughter?”

“Yes.”

“He has been a father to her?”

“Often.” And in the future, I thought, he'd be more of one.

Not that Sam and I had spent the night discussing the future. The whole situation, the strange band of hired guns, the unfamiliar accommodations, the high level of stress, were too much for sustained conversation. The comfort of Sam was that we didn't need to talk, that I could rest my head on his shoulder and sleep in his arms.

We were staying in the most unlikely of hideouts, a bright yellow house with green shutters and balconies dripping with flowers. Tucked between a monastery and a school, it bore no resemblance to the kind of stripped-down shelter where Mob families “go to the mattresses” in Hollywood movies. A couple of the rooms had extra cots set up next to sofas, but on the whole, it looked like a normal house, with a stocked kitchen, and framed pictures on the walls. The caretaker was a gray-haired granny who'd once been a skilled smuggler, according to Ignacio. She seemed, at any rate, unfazed by Ignacio's personnel or “equipment,” which included revolvers, RPGs, assault rifles, Kevlar vests, cell phones, and walkie-talkies.

I'd spoken to Gloria on one of the cells early this morning. She said Roz had so far been unable to make a connection between Mark Bracken or any high mucky-muck at BrackenCorp, and gold. She was now working on GSC. It was a nagging problem, the gold. Why risk a lucrative government contract for gold, for this particular gold, which couldn't be sold to a museum? If the Colombian government found out and alerted the U.S. government, there'd be hell to pay.

Sam had listened in on the call. He'd asked me not to mention his whereabouts to Gloria.

“The woman with the glasses,” I said to Roldan, “reading the guidebook.” She was keeping close track of us, using a small mirror tucked into her guidebook. The sun had flashed off the shiner once too often.

“Good,” Roldan said. “In three minutes, we head inside.”

I hoped our trackers were suffering from the heat as much as I was. Felicia would be chatting with the landlady by now. Rafael and his lady friend would be well on their way to the country farm.

The people at the farm, I thought, should admit illicit lovers whose car had broken down. The landlady should speak freely to a prospectivetenant.
Whether any of Ignacio's people thought they recognized Roldan, whether anyone decided to share the suspicion, remained a niggling worry on top of other niggling worries, like why Sam hadn't wanted Gloria to know he was in Cartagena.

“Can we go in now?” My water bottle was half empty. My lips were parched, but I couldn't afford to touch another drop.

Roldan nodded.

Luis and Sam had entered the fort an hour before us. The skills of the Kogi, levitation and telepathy, might be closed to us, but deception was available. I sucked in a breath. The lowest level of the fort had once been used to store dynamite. Troops stationed to guard it during battle had strict orders to touch off the fuse if all was lost, to blow the castle to kingdom come rather than let it be taken by the enemy.

We had some dynamite of our own waiting in the easternmost gallery.

Roldan led the way, moving with the sure steps that had made quick work of steep Tayrona staircases. I followed, thinking my lungs might burst into flame. I'd cherished the idea that the interior of the fort would be cool. The difference wasn't immediate, but three levels down, it cooled perceptibly. The air was absolutely still.

“This way.” Roldan left the main corridor and entered a stone passage marked E
MPLOYEES
O
NLY
. We were almost sprinting. We didn't want our upstairs watchers to miss us, to feel it necessary to mount a search.

“Two rights, then a left,” Roldan murmured. I'd already stripped off my ruana. I draped it over my left arm. With my right hand, I removed a pre-moistened cloth from my pocket. As we ran, I scrubbed my face clean of makeup.

Sam and Luis were waiting in the appointed place. Luis wasn't quite as tall as I was, but his build would pass, disguised under the ruana. When I'd selected him as my double, he'd taken some ribbing. He'd also grieved the sacrifice of his mustache.

Sam hadn't wanted his role as Roldan's double either, but no one else fit the part half as well.

I traded the ruana for the phony mustache Luis had worn into the fort. I poured the remainder of the bottled water over my head, quickly brushed my wet hair into a knot, securing it with a scrunchy and bobby
pins. I topped it with Luis's hat, a shallow straw job in stripes of black and beige. Roldan and Sam traded shirts, hats, and sunglasses.

“Check,” Sam said urgently. Each of us regarded our twin, our dop-pelganger.

“Nice mustache,” Sam told me.

I fluffed Luis's wig, the most difficult item to obtain and, I thought, the diciest. I'd styled my hair in close imitation, but the shade wasn't quite true. I wondered whether Luis had done his own makeup.

“Not bad,” I said.

“Luis,” Roldan said. “Come, let's leave the lovebirds together for a moment, no?” He motioned to the thin man in the rose ruana, and they walked ten, twenty steps, into a low side passage.

“Be careful.” I put my arms around Sam and held him close. He kissed me.

“Hey,” he murmured in my ear. “I'm always careful. What about you?”

We clung to each other in spite of the heat. I thought I heard a noise behind me.

I turned and called to Roldan. “Now?”

“Take another minute, if you like,” he said.

At the time, I thought it was kindness.

CHAPTER 38

When Roldan and I finally emerged from the
steaming fort a full hour after the departure of our doubles, none of the three watchers we'd identified remained in place. Both our departure from San Felipe and our return to the yellow house seemed to go unremarked, and the empty streets of Cartagena, deserted in the afternoon heat, made it easy to tag a follower. Their emptiness made sense; it was too hot to breathe. As soon as we got inside, I ripped off Luis's shirt, peeling down to a tank top, and tried to stick my head under the faucet of the sink in the corner. The phony mustache came off easily.

Hook-nosed Rafael was seated on the couch, drinking a beer. “They took the bait, eh?”

Roldan nodded.

“I'm sure Luis looked fetching,” Rafael said.

If the watchers had followed Sam and Luis, we'd succeeded in thinning the opposition troops. I patted my dripping face with a crumpled paper towel, and listened carefully as Rafael continued speaking. It didn't matter whether the substitution at the fort had fooled anyone if Ignacio's troops hadn't found Paolina.

Rafael was telling Roldan that he'd accompanied a woman named Maria Inez to the farm owned by Ana's family. They'd borrowed Maria Inez's brother's battered truck instead of hiring a rental.

He said, “A woman answered the door. Maybe sixty years old, little
bitty bun on the top of her head. Senora Octavia, the maid called her. She let me use the phone right away, offered us a cup of coffee, had no problem with me going upstairs to use the bathroom. If she's keeping any kidnapped kids in the house, she's one cool ice queen.”

“Outbuildings?” I thought Rafael sounded too jaunty; I wasn't sure he'd done a thorough job.

“A barn, a gardener's shed, a storage shed near a field.”

“You checked them all?”

“I didn't ask her to let me inspect the grounds with a microscope.”

I glared at him.

“Look, Maria Inez and I had breakdowns at neighboring farms, too. None of the neighbors mentioned any goings and comings, any low-flying planes or trucks or extra cars. It's an isolated district; somebody would have noticed something, said something. If not to me, to Maria Inez; she looks as harmless as a little poodle dog. Ask Ignacio when he gets back. She notices things, Maria Inez.”

That left the apartment house. I was all for going out to get a firsthand look at it, but Roldan recommended caution. He recommended waiting for Ignacio, Felicia, and Silas.

Fine for him, I thought, watching him stare off into space.communing with his
mamas
, no doubt, speaking without words. It would have been a good time to take up smoking again. I didn't want a beer. I was antsy enough that I went into the kitchen and washed dishes. Roz would have fainted if she'd seen me. Sam, too.

I was uneasy about him, and I tried to ignore the feeling. It was hard to do it, but the fact of the matter was I hadn't asked him to come. I needed to treat him the way I wanted him to treat me, as a pro working a job. Still, I was overly conscious of the telephone on the wall, as though it had swelled to three times its size. He or Luis should call soon, give us the all-clear. If everything went according to plan.

A cup slipped out of my sudsy hands and rattled into the sink. It didn't break.

Roldan, it seemed, still had a few trusted confederates at the farm with the bumpy landing strip, the one at which our plane had landed. That was where Luis and Sam were leading the watchers from the fort, to be lured inside, taken, and questioned.

I scrubbed plates and glassware, but the phone stayed silent. Rafael
came in and started emptying the refrigerator. We should eat, he said, removing take-out containers of rice and fish, leftovers from last night's meal. He heaped food on the just-washed plates and ferried them out to the low coffee table in the big room.

A key turned loudly in the lock. Voices. The others had returned, and I was in the big room, shaking water off my hands, before they had time to close the door, much less sit down.

“The apartment building? Is she there?”