Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction (28 page)

“
What’s your name?” he
asked Leidi.

The face of the big man, which was still in
the doorway, lit up with a blush. She pointed at herself with her
fat hand.

“
Me?”

Padovani nodded.

“
What’s your name? Leidi,
and what else?”

“
Leidi,” she said, and she
waited a moment before adding, “Leidi Zorzano.”

Padovani turned back to the director.

“
Can you confirm that
she’s a woman?”

Ringo threatened her with the tranquilizing
gun again.

“
Tell us. Do what the old
man says.”

The woman shrank in her
chair and said she would. As the two men disguised as jailers
watched her closely, she searched in her computer for Leidi’s file
and showed them a photo.
It couldn’t be
more different from the way she looks now
,
Padovani thought. He compared the smile of the gorgeous young woman
in the picture with the stupefied grimace of the man who was
half-collapsed in the doorway.

“
Print the content of the
file,” Ringo ordered. “And look for the data on her exchange, too.
The man who’s in Venezuela.”

The director searched a
little more in the FarmaCom database. A photograph of the fat man
appeared on the screen. Padovani got closer to read his name:
Philip S. Abramov. It didn’t ring a bell.

When the director had finished printing the
files, Ringo ordered her to sign and stamp the pages. Then he
grabbed the papers from her hands before the Indian could get a
look at them and stuck them inside his uniform as if it was food he
was stealing from a supermarket.

Padovani was annoyed, but
there was no time to argue. He asked the director if she needed to
do anything else to justify moving Leidi to the women’s block. She
stood up, looked for some business cards on the desk, and put them
in her pocket.

“
There’s nothing to
prepare. I’d already decided to move her this morning.” She looked
at Leidi. “I’m very sorry... for the trouble you’ve had. Although I
suppose it makes no sense to say so.”

The three exchangers silently watched the
director as she crossed the room decisively. Leidi got out of the
doorway. Before anyone opened it, Padovani moved and put a hand on
the doorknob.

“
Just a minute.” He turned
to Ringo. “Put the gun away.”

His companion obeyed. He looked at the group
again, and when he was done, he opened the door.

“
Ladies first.”

The director seemed to hesitate. Leidi
pushed her through.

VII

Everyone let them pass. It
must have been true that they’d already decided to move Leidi to
the women’s block. She got a few curious glances, but no one looked
twice at the guards who escorted her. Finally, they got through the
doors of the building and were out in the common patio. The sun
blinded them for a few seconds until their eyes adjusted.
Now what?
the Indian
asked himself.

Ringo came up to the director to make her
change her direction.

“
This way is
better.”

He pointed to a delivery
van. It didn’t seem like a bad idea. Padovani touched Leidi’s arm
to show her the new route. Soon they could see the logo on the side
of the van: “Northern Group. Excellent meat.” Padovani stopped
cold. He saw movement in the driver’s cab. It wasn’t empty. The van
driver got out without looking at them, as if they didn’t exist,
and ran to open the door of the cargo compartment for
them.

The blond hair on the
Indian’s skin stood up. He looked at Ringo. One sight of his face
and he knew that he’d been planning the rest of the escape without
him.

“
You go inside, with her.”
Ringo pointed at the director. “I’ll go up front.”

The Indian looked around.
The patio was empty. The guards at the doors didn’t seem to be
paying attention unless they had eyes on the backs of their heads.
He’d need to take advantage of the situation to escape, and he’d
have time later to worry about Ringo’s secret plans.

He grabbed the director by
the arm and made her get into the cargo compartment. Then he helped
Leidi, and got in behind her. He closed it from inside and hit the
wall of the driver’s cab a couple of times. The van started right
up.

After getting as comfortable as he could on
the floor, Padovani took out the pistol.

“
Don’t think about
yelling.”

The director lowered her
head. The Indian looked around the compartment. Not one trace of
dead cows. Leidi had circles of sweat under her armpits and
breathed with her mouth open as her chest heaved. None of them
seemed like “excellent meat” but they might be going to the
slaughterhouse anyway.

The van stopped. A muffled conversation
could be heard. The van started again. Traffic noise. They must
have left the center. Padovani noticed that his hand hurt because
he was holding the gun so tightly. The director raised her
eyes.

“
We’re almost there. Don’t
worry.”

He congratulated himself
deep down because he had sounded convincing, even though he himself
was nervous. His heart began to jump out of his chest. He breathed
deep and tried to relax. They stayed quiet for the rest of the trip
until the van stopped again. They heard the doors of the driver’s
compartment open and shut.

Padovani was intent on the sounds and the
director caught him by surprise. She leaped on him. But she only
wanted to say something.

“
I understand what you’re
trying to do, but it’s a mistake.... Ringo isn’t who you think he
is. His enemy is FarmaCom, and what happens to you doesn’t matter
to him. Go back to the center and we’ll talk. There won’t be any
reprisals.”

The woman slipped a card
into the pocket of his uniform. Padovani had no time to react. He
looked at Leidi. She’d seen everything, including the card. The
door of the compartment opened and Ringo’s smiling face looked in.
He was dressed in a suit now, not a jailer’s uniform. He threw a
pile of clothing inside.

“
We’ll go on foot now, old
man. Put this on.”

If anything was clear, the
Indian thought, it was that Ringo didn’t need his help to escape
from the nursery. So he needed something else from him, and
Padovani began to suspect what it might be.

He took the card from his
pocket and touched it. A nanoscopic tracker could have been hidden
in the fine cardboard. These days they could be anywhere. If that
were true, the director’s words and suggestion could only be a
trap, a ruse to make him doubt his companion. He did what he
thought most prudent: he paused a second to read the telephone
number, then ripped up the card and threw away the
pieces.

“
I’ll do anything before
going back to my country.”

He hopped that Ringo and the woman would
each interpret the message differently.

VIII

The van driver gave Ringo
a mobile phone and some instructions. Padovani couldn’t hear the
words clearly but the driver seemed to want to communicate the
urgency of something. Ringo seemed to take it as a joke, as if he
wasn’t in a hurry.

He took the papers the
director had signed out of the jacket and showed them to the
driver, who wanted to read them, but Ringo wouldn’t let them go. He
just let the other man look at them briefly, then put them back
into his jacket.

After a little more
discussion, the driver got back into the vehicle. The Northern
Group van sped away with the director as the only cargo. Padovani
thought it best not to ask where they were taking her. He glanced
at both sides of the street. They were in a subdivision of
two-story homes surrounded by yards. He didn’t see a
soul.

The clothing Ringo had given him were his
size. He put the tranquilizer gun in the back of his waistband.

“
Inside the jacket you
have some cash,” Ringo told him. “You need more? I can get
it.”

The Indian found a wad of
hundred-euro bills in an interior pocket. He thought about the
yellow Parcheesi pieces. Ringo had everything planned, and it
wasn’t going to be easy to give him the slip. He weighed the wad,
pretended to count it, and then said it would be enough. He’d need
a lot less to find Terry. But it was nice to have extra for other
expenses.

Leidi also seemed comfortable in her new
clothes, a suit made to measure including a double-breasted jacket
with which she could have easily gotten a role in a B-movie about
the Mafia. Padovani held out his hand and tried to repeat the same
goodbye that the black Vladimiro had given him.

“
Good luck.”

Leidi didn’t bother to
return the gesture. Ringo was the one that spoke.

“
What’s up?”

Padovani didn’t want to
find out if the bulge that Ringo’s jacket hid was more dangerous
than the guard’s tranquilizer gun.
But you
can’t always get what you want.
He took a
quick look behind him. The end of the street was very far
away.

“
Nothing. We can separate
here. I hope you have a lot of luck.”

“
What’s the hurry?” Ringo
smiled. “Do you have something to do?”

The Indian sized up the
two men in front of him again. Really, Leidi was a woman —if the
file that the had seen in the director’s office wasn’t a lie— but
in any case she was still pretty fat. But Ringo was armed. Padovani
decided to return the smile and answer with a question.

“
Are you
tell....”

Ringo had the gun out
before the last syllable left his mouth, came up to him and took
the guard’s gun. Then he went back to Leidi and gave it to her.
Both of them aimed at him.

“
I suggest we go see this
friend of yours that you told me about.”

Padovani clenched his
fists. He had known a lot of members of armed organizations of
Marxist inspiration or aesthetics who came from all parts of the
globe to train in his country in the old revolutionary times. The
friend Ringo referred to was a contact from that time who was now
calling himself Terry. Before signing the contract with FarmaCom,
he’d sent him a message to see if, when the moment came, he could
help him disappear in his new body without leaving a trace that
Europol could follow. He didn’t know how deep Terry was still
involved with Sink-Tooth, but he had to take that risk.

The answer took a month to
come: “If you manage to escape from the nursery, look for me.” It
came accompanied by the instructions to find him. Terry wouldn’t
have given them to just anyone. That must be the only reason Ringo
needed him. To get to Terry.

“
Don’t worry about that,”
Ringo continued. “We know who your friend is, his relationship with
revolutionary groups.... We’re on the same side. We only want to
pass on some information.”

“
What about?”

Ringo and Leidi looked at
each other for a second. If they exchanged some sort of gesture,
Padovani didn’t see it.

“
Let’s just say your
friend will be delighted to meet Leidi. You’ll find out when we see
him.”

Padovani nodded. That
might or might not be true, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going
to let himself be used twice.

“
Okay.”

He explained to Ringo
that, to meet Terry, first they had to go to a big park named
something like “El Respiro.”

“
That would be ‘El
Retiro,’ old man.”

The Indian noticed that
Ringo knew the city. They were pretty far away to get there on
foot, but he didn’t say anything. He just walked ahead of them
obediently, stopping at every corner to ask new directions from
Ringo. They went at a slow pace. If the driver had wanted Ringo to
hurry, it didn’t seem to matter. Leidi panted from the effort to
move her client’s lumbering body. Padovani felt irregular
heartbeats in his chest again, but since they weren’t moving fast,
he didn’t feel tired.

When they finally saw the park fence, Ringo
asked where they should enter, and he stopped to think. He pointed
out an underground passage that went under the street and came out
in the park. Ringo ordered him to go walk slowly, warning him with
a gesture about what was under his jacket.

They entered the
underground passage. It smelled of urine. Padovani hesitated. It
could be the last chance to run. He imagined running down the
tunnel toward the light and getting an easy shot in the
back.
It’s difficult to speculate when
your life is on the line.
He decided to
wait a little longer. They left the tunnel.

Padovani stayed a few
steps ahead of the others, and right away he noticed a group at a
bench. Three were sitting down and the rest were standing around
it. They were black, probably illegal sub-Saharans, and they wore
sunglasses even though they were under the shade of an enormous
willow. One of the seated men made a gesture, rubbing his fingers
with his thumb. Padovani interpreted that as an offer of drugs. He
nodded slightly, hoping that Ringo wouldn’t notice.

The black man got up from the bench and
walked slowly toward him. Padovani turned and studied the
situation. Leidi was gasping for air with her mouth open, leaning
on the wall of the passage. She was out of combat. The Indian felt
a twinge in his chest. His pulse was speeding up.