The Cain File (17 page)

“Until I toss it once we get to Bogotá and make the call to meet Comrade Cain.”

“Sign up for the rip-off airplane Wi-Fi service, create a logon for Frenesi
,
ping IceLady69. Then get rid of that piece of paper. You can eat it. That’s the way they do it in the movies, huh?”

“A fallback communication plan. I like it.”

“As a last resort, Frenesi is where we can reach out if everything else is unavailable. And no one else will know about it.”

“But it won’t come to that.”

“A cakewalk,” she said.

“Milk run,” John Rae reminded her.

“It really is.”

“And you’re just gonna split if something goes wrong, right? Which it won’t.”

“Yep,” Maggie said. “So what’s your screen name gonna be? Give me an idea, so I won’t be talking to some perv.”

“MadDog.”

“Not bad,” she said. “But probably taken. You might have to play around with it some.”

“What’s MadDog in Spanish?”

“
Perro rabioso.
”

“That sounds like ‘rabid dog’.”

“Well, it kind of is. But if the shoe fits . . .”

John Rae pocketed the paper. “You’re a natural, Maggie.”

The plane bounced, major turbulence, throwing John Rae against her, mashing her back onto the metal sink, and John Rae onto her. It was quick, but memorable. They straightened back up quickly, brushing themselves off, looking away. The intercom crackled, the captain instructing passengers to return to their seats and fasten their seatbelts.

The plane jostled again.

“Where were we?” John Rae said, giving her a direct smile.

“You’re going to set up that Frenesi account.” Maggie winked. “See you in Bogotá. By the taxi stand.”

John Rae smiled. “IceLady69?”

“Later, Mad Doggie,” Maggie shuffled around John Rae without touching him too much, which wasn’t a hundred percent possible, then let herself out of the airplane restroom.

The big-hair flight attendant was coming down the aisle, checking seatbelts, looking left and right. She noticed Maggie exiting the lav, then John Rae behind her. She frowned, then shook her head.

Maggie smiled to herself as she found her seat, sat down, buckled herself in.

As if
. . .

“Alice Mendes?” the Colombian passport-control agent said, looking Maggie in the eye.

“That would be me,” Maggie said, meeting his gaze.

The agent was about forty, fine-skinned, with an angular face and mean eyes. He wore a khaki uniform shirt with little red epaulets and a chunky watch that would probably be good to thirty fathoms if it hadn’t been a knockoff. He reeked of strong tobacco. But the time he was taking, studying Maggie’s forged passport, said something wasn’t right.

In the Plexiglas passport-control booth next to her, in front of the yellow line where the other disembarked passengers waited not so patiently, Maggie heard the female agent continue to grill John Rae about the reason for his visit to Colombia. She had asked four questions so far. But John Rae was staying cool.
Vacation
, he had said—and
business
, adding that little lilt that seemed to work with the ladies. Maybe she could show him around Bogotá. When did she get off work anyway?

The agent scanning Maggie’s passport didn’t look up.
“¿Cuánto tiempo te quedas en Bogotá?”
he asked her. Rude bastard was using the familiar
tú
form. Talking down to her. Maybe it was a trick.

“
No ha-blow
es-pan-yol,
” Maggie said in a nasal twang. “English.”

He looked up, puckering his lips. A Latina who didn’t speak the language. What good was she? Besides the obvious. He squinted at her breasts in her tight red turtleneck, then rubbed a long thumbnail over the corner of her passport photograph. Maggie wasn’t too worried about that. The passport was made by Agency techs, so it was probably better than an original. She’d studied the passport herself thoroughly on the flight down, memorizing her new temporary persona. The document had perfect wear and tear, smudged stamps that spanned the years, trips to England, France. Authentic-looking.

The agent worked his nail under the corner of her earnest-looking photo. Behind the yellow line on the floor, tired passengers gave heavy sighs. Children whined. John Rae stood at relative ease, asking the female agent about a good place to have dinner in Bogotá. She wasn’t taking the bait.

Several pairs of feet came clomping up to the far side of John Rae’s passport station.

Maggie tilted her head a notch and glimpsed, out of the corner of her eye, three people standing around John Rae. Without lifting her head, she saw two pair of black lace-up boots, uniform pants, and a pair of gray slacks ending in shiny pointed black loafers with buckles.

The agent in front of her peeled the corner of her photo up.

“Please don’t do that,” Maggie said to him.

He looked up, eyes narrowed, mouth tightened. A woman telling him what to do. Some jumped-up
Ladina
from the U.S., thinking her shit didn’t stink.

“Me gustaría lamerte todo,”
he whispered between his nicotine-stained teeth.

So he’d like to lick her all over. Classy. If it was a test, she wasn’t going to fall for it. She looked back in mock confusion. “I’m sorry?  What did you say? Something important?”

He ignored her, flipping pages in her passport hard enough to pull one seam loose.

Next to her she heard the man in gray speak to John Rae in English. “Come with us, please, sir.”

“Why?” John Rae said. “Is something wrong?”

“Just a formality. This way.”

Maggie turned her head slightly, saw the man in the gray suit more clearly. He had a thick mustache.

“Whatever for?” John Rae said. “What have I done?”

“Just a few questions, sir.”

“But I want to know what this is about,” John Rae said. “I have an important meeting downtown. My associates from Brila Chemical are waiting for me.”

“Just come with us, sir,” the man said.

“Why don’t you give them a call?” John Rae reached in his pocket, got his cell phone. “I’ve got the number plugged in right here . . .”

“What are you doing?” the man in gray said.

“Just texting my associate,” John Rae said, quickly punching in keys, hitting enter. “Let him know I might be a few minutes late. Even though there’s not going to be much of a delay, right?”

“Stop!” The man in the suit snapped as one of the uniforms slapped a hand on John Rae’s arm. The phone flew out of John Rae’s hand and hit the tiled floor, spinning.

John Rae lurched forward and stepped on the phone in a reasonable display of nervousness, crushing the device flat with a crunch of plastic and electronics.

“Now look what you made me do!” he said. “I just got that. 4G LTE and everything.”

“You did that on purpose.”

“I most certainly did not. Cost a frickin’ bundle, I can tell you.”

“Be quiet.”

There was a clack as the other uniform, a chunky young woman with a solid figure and glistening black hair rolled in a tight bun, readied a small machine gun.

“OK, OK,” John Rae said, raising his hands halfway. “Hold your horses, guys and girls. Let’s just go straighten this out, then.” He gave Maggie a quick
what-the-hell
look, almost indiscernible.

Maggie took a deep breath, which filled her beating chest like a drum. The woman with the machine gun caught her glance, stared furiously back, nodding for Maggie to mind her own business. Maggie looked away, fought another breath down into her lungs. She heard someone in line behind her say “Look. They’re taking that man away.”

“Probably drugs,” someone else said.

“You don’t bring dope
into
Colombia, knucklehead.”

While the three officials marched John Rae down a brightly lit hallway off the main corridor that led to baggage claim, Maggie’s agent was still leafing through her passport.

“Do you know that man?” he asked casually in Spanish.

“I already told you:
no hablo
español,
” she said with more than a trace of annoyance. “How long is this going to take anyway?”

“Do you know that man?” he said in English.

“No. Why? What has he done?”

“Where are you staying in Bogotá?” the passport agent said in English.

“Let me just find the name of the place.” Maggie slipped her rucksack off her shoulder. She dug inside, found her copy of Lonely Planet Colombia—complete with a U.S. hundred-dollar bill tucked inside the page listing Bogotá hotels. She handed the book over. “Here it is,” she said, holding the page with her finger. “Casa Dann Carlton. It’s downtown. Nice, is it?”

“We’re going to be here all night,” someone in line said behind her.

“Welcome to Latin America,” someone else said.

The agent examined the guide. He handed it back, sans hundred-dollar bill. He found a page in her passport, stamped with it fanfare, then gestured impatiently for the next person behind the yellow line.

A simple shakedown. Common in this part of the world. But what about John Rae?

She dared not make a fuss. She might wind up in the same place.

“Next!” the passport agent hissed.

Maggie collected her passport and strolled down the corridor, trying to act casual. Peering down the side passageway where John Rae had been escorted. Nothing but closed doors. She cocked an ear. Nothing. She headed cautiously down the side hallway.

“Move along,” a woman said in Spanish.

Maggie turned, saw the female soldier with the machine gun. Where had she come from?

“Restroom?” Maggie said. “
El baño?
”

“There!” the guard snapped in English, jutting her jaw toward the main hallway, where baggage claim was. “Go.”

Maggie sighed, followed the signs toward baggage claim.

John Rae was a big boy. If anyone would know a way out of the jam like this, it would be him. This was probably child’s play. But what if someone had been tipped off? Maggie thought it might be a genuine misunderstanding. Or more extortion. More than a few South American passport agents paid a “fee” for their lucrative jobs and were under pressure to produce. But it felt like too much of a coincidence—both of them being hit up.

At baggage claim, Maggie milled around the carousel, even though she had no checked luggage. The oval machine ground into motion as more travelers arrived. Luggage starting bouncing down a chute. She nonchalantly kept looking back the way she came. With any luck, sooner or later, one of the arriving passengers would be John Rae.

The guard with the hair bun and submachine gun arrived, along with another guard. The woman scanned the crowd, possibly looking for someone. Maggie turned abruptly and headed toward Customs, keeping her eyes straight ahead as she marched past two soldiers and a German shepherd. It felt like even the dog was staring at her. One soldier gave a low whistle as Maggie walked by.

At Customs, agents were opening luggage with gusto, burrowing through clothes to the consternation of the travelers. But no one stopped Maggie.

Crossing the last dozen yards toward the automatic exit door into the airport proper, Maggie knew what No Man’s Land on the Berlin Wall must have felt like. As much as she wanted to, Maggie didn’t turn to see if bun-and-gun and her friend were on her tail. But she acted as if they were, picking up the pace without actually breaking into a run. The electric doors whipped open and she was suddenly immersed in the dissonance of a big South American airport: people holding up cardboard signs with names on them, others barking out offers of taxis and ground transportation, vying for her attention. Maggie burrowed into the crowd, flipping her backpack down, unzipping it, pulling out a floppy beige knit slouch hat and dark sunglasses, quickly donning both and stuffing her long hair up inside the hat as she exited the throng hovering around the doors.

She passed through a second set of electronic doors, taking her outside, where a line of taxis pumped exhaust into the cool night air. She turned, looking around indifferently. The female guard with the machine gun was still inside, in front of the first set of doors, scanning the crowd.

A considerable line of people waiting for cabs greeted Maggie. A man with a paunch and cap was deciding who went where.

“Wait there,” he instructed Maggie, pointing her to the end of a long queue of people herding luggage.

She moved in close, slipped a folded U.S. twenty-dollar bill into his rough hand. “My mother’s in the hospital,
amigo,
”
she said in Spanish.
“Her second stroke.
I
haven’t slept a wink for days, just getting here.” She dropped her tone to unabashed helpless female. “I’d be so grateful.”

The money disappeared. “Right this way, miss.”

“Her mother’s in the hospital!” the man said as he pushed the businessman aside who was just getting into a rumbling little Daihatsu at the front of the line. Maggie dived into the back seat, yanked the door shut, handed another twenty to the stout driver in front.

“As fast as this fine vehicle will take us, uncle. Burn rubber, if you please.”

Bald tires squealed on asphalt as the taxi peeled out of the clogged lane in front of the airport.

“You want to get out
here
?” the taxi driver said, blinking at Maggie in dismay from the rearview mirror. The rosary beads hanging from it vibrated with the uneven pinging of the tinny engine. They were on the outskirts of Bogotá, stars twinkling on a deserted stretch of country road. The perpetual coldness of the Andes blew steadily.

“I do,” she said, peeling off bills, handing them over the seat. “
Muchas gracias
.”

The
taxista
took the money. “But it’s not safe here,
señorita
. It is the middle of nowhere.”

“I’m fine.” She got out, waited for him to turn around and head back into the capital. He did, finally, giving a reluctant shrug before carving a tight 180 in the two-lane road, and setting off, the engine whining. She watched the red taillights disappear.

The sounds of night began to take over. Crickets. Wind. She was back in the world of her birth. An ancient world. Despite the bad turn things had taken, she felt its power.