The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller (23 page)

“Humor me, Horace.”

“What do I know about bat guano?”

“Yes.”

“Enough to know it’s not a breakfast cereal.”

“Anything else?”

“What is this, seventh-grade science class?”

“Alright.” Victor pressed the handkerchief tighter to his nose. He turned to Kate. “Bring us some chai, will you, my dear? We’ll be in the alcove.”

Kate’s face had gone white. She did not look at me. Come to think of it, she had never seen me violent before. She nodded her head, a nervous twitch. About-faced, and strode off into the shadows.

The monks let go of me. Victor said, “Come,” and minced across the cavern to a nook about five feet high. I followed. A lantern lit the alcove.

On the floor, a low table surrounded by bean bags. A chessboard sat ready for battle. Blood dribbled from Victor’s broken nose. He beckoned a nearby monk. “A pair of pliers. And some medical tape. Fetch.”

The monk’s shaved head bowed, disappeared.

I eased myself into a bean bag. “So,” I said. “Bat guano.”

“You play chess, Horace?” Victor moved his king pawn forward two spaces.

“No,” I said. “Can’t say I do. And what does bat guano have to do with—”

“The key,” he said, “is to know your opponent better than he knows himself.”

“Like, duh,” I said. Not that I ever bothered to think that far ahead, mind you.

He reached over the board, responded with my queen knight. “To know what he’s going to do before he does it. Anticipate everything. Plan for everything.” He looked at me. “Then it doesn’t matter what happens. Every which way you win.”

I said, “I suppose you know what I’m going to do now.”

He wagged a finger at me. “You’re a wild card, Horace. But that also makes you predictable.”

“Oh yeah? Did you predict this?” I swept my arm across the board, sending the pieces flying.

He laughed. “Indeed I did. You are predictable in your wildness.”

I frowned. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. How do you know that about me?”

“Pitt speaks highly of you, Horace. And now you are impatient for me to elaborate on the theme of bat guano. Am I not correct?”

“I still don’t see what bat guano has to do with Pitt becoming a born-again whatever-you-are. But go ahead.” I sat back in my bean bag. “Talk.”

A grin peeked around Victor’s hand, his voice nasal. “You are aware,” he said, “of how Bolivia lost its coastline?”

“Sure,” I said. “There was a war. Back in the 1880s. Over the bat guano. But what’s that got to do with me and Pitt?”

“Thousands of years of bat droppings accumulated in the Atacama Desert. The Europeans and Americans paid big money for the stuff. So Chile declared war on Bolivia and took away her coastline. Some of Peru’s, too.”

My applause echoed loud in the cavern. “Wonderful history lesson. Get to the point?”

We paused as Kate approached, teapot balanced on a platter. She knelt, put three cups down in front us, poured tea in two. It smelled of cardamom and cloves. I tasted it. Brewed in milk. But it was missing the secret ingredient.

“What,” I said. “No
pisco?”

She shook her head. Bit her lip.

“We do not permit alcohol here,” Victor said.

“Whoa,” I said. Touched her elbow. “How do you survive?”

She stood without looking at me. “There are other ways of coping, Horse.”

Victor smiled at her. “Thank you, my dear.”

Kate marched back into the darkness of the cave.

“No
pisco,”
I said. “That’s what I call doing it harsh.”

“That is a matter of perspective.” Victor sipped his chai. “For instance, losing your coastline is harsh. Becoming a landlocked nation is harsh. How would you feel?”

I shrugged. “Must have pissed them off.”

“It still does,” said Victor. “Know what tomorrow is?”

“Two days after yesterday?”

“Maritime Day. In La Paz. At 4000m above sea level. You believe it? There will be marches, parades, speeches. President Ovejo will fire his pistol in the air, demand Chile return their land. Bolivians will wave their flags, stomp their feet and go home unhappy.”

“They want their bat guano back.”

Victor chuckled, blew on his tea. “Bat guano is worthless these days. What they want is a road to the sea.”

“Hence the Bolivian navy on Lake Titicaca.”

“If you can call it a navy.”

I sipped my chai. Without liquor it was undrinkable. I hurled the cup at the wall. The impact splattered Victor with hot tea. I stood, stooping under the alcove’s low ceiling. “It’s been lovely. Really it has. But either you tell me where Pitt is, and what the hell is going on, or I’m walking out of here right now.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Horace.”

A bald head descended into the light, a pair of pliers glinting in his outstretched palm. Beside it, a roll of green medical tape. Victor flicked the tape at me.

“What’s this for?”

“Broke a finger, didn’t you?”

The pinkie on my left hand was mashed. I had forgotten about it. “Oh. Thanks.” I unrolled a piece of tape, tore it off with my teeth. The thudding pain of broken bone made delightful background noise to this uninvited conference with Victor. I bound the injured digit to its neighbor.

Victor weighed the pliers in his palm. He said, “Pitt is on Isla del Sol. You’ll see him tomorrow. Now sit down.”

“What’s he doing on Isla del Sol? Hanging out with a bunch of tourists?” I finished the job on my finger.

He shoved the pliers in his mouth. “No, actually. He’s negotiating with the CIA. To try to stop the war. Now sit.”

The lantern light illuminated half of Victor’s face, leaving the other side in darkness. He twisted the pliers. I could hear the roots of the tooth shred as it separated from his flesh. His head jerked back. Clamped between the pliers was a broken tooth. He asked, “What do they produce at that mine?”

“Where Pitt works?”

He waved a hand. “The Anglo-Dutch mine. Yes.”

I took off my woolen hat and ran my fingers through my hair. “Lithium.”

“Foreigners wanted bat guano, so Bolivia lost its coastline.” He spat blood, put the pliers back in his mouth. “Now the foreigners want the lithium.”

I shrugged. “So they’re going to take it.”

“Precisely.” He spoke around the pliers. Another jerk, another tooth. “Ovejo’s a socialist. Ninety percent of the world’s lithium comes from the
altiplano.
The salt flats.” Victor mopped his lips with the crusty handkerchief, fished around in his mouth with an index finger. “The Chilean mine just across the border produces most of the world’s lithium at present. There are also small deposits in Tibet, Afghanistan and Australia, but the world’s biggest reserves are in Bolivia itself.”

I sat down again. “So what?” I said. “Has the entire world gone manic-depressive? Is the demand really that high?”

Victor paused, his cup halfway to his lips. Blood leaked onto his chin. “Do you not read the papers?”

“I’ve got enough misery in my own life without reading about the rest of the world.”

“The oil is running out. You know this.” It was not a question.

“Sure.”

“What happens then?”

“We all die. And good riddance.”

A raised index finger. “Lithium is used to make batteries for electric cars.”

I asked, “Why can’t the Americans just buy the lithium? Wouldn’t that be cheaper?”

“At Ovejo’s extortionate prices? Think OPEC, only ten times worse.”

I considered that. “What’s the pretext? For war, I mean.”

Victor shifted sideways in his bean bag until he sat next to me. He lowered his voice. His hairy knuckles caressed my forearm. “A bomb, Horace. They are going to blow up the Bolivian mine. The CIA. Make it look like the Chileans did it.”

“Are people going to believe that?”

“The domestic situation in La Paz is tricky. Ovejo will have to respond. Support for his policies is fading. He is a maniac for power. He will have to invade Chile just to save face.”

“Then what?”

Victor settled back in his bean bag. “Peru and Bolivia have a secret alliance. Peru will break the alliance. Bolivia invades Chile, Peru invades Bolivia, together the two countries divide the
altiplano.”

“And once again Bolivia gets screwed.”

He poured himself another cup of chai. Every movement in the cave echoed, a chattering of shuffled feet and subdued voices.

“How do you know all this?” I said at last, dreading the answer.

“You know my source already.”

I choked on my own saliva. “Pitt.”

“Who else?”

Victor held the teapot over the empty third cup. I nodded. It was better than nothing, I supposed. He poured.

I said, “So Pitt finds out about this plot. He comes here? To you? Why?”

“Pitt is a man of conscience.”

I made a rude noise.

“If you think that,” Victor said, “then you do not know your friend as well as I had hoped. He came here to atone. For his sins.”

“Was he successful?”

“Yes. And you can be too.”

I looked around me. Water dripped from stalactites. “By chanting mantras in a freezing cave?”

“He saw what we have here. What we do. That a war would destroy all this.”

“All what?”

He shrugged. “Our work. Volunteering. Meditation. Our search for peace.”

The hot chai burned my lips. I drank anyway. “How,” I said, “do you propose to stop this war?”

“We’ve got a plan.” He held up a hand. “Forgive me if I do not tell you all my secrets on first acquaintance. But if you’re willing, we’d like you to do the honors.”

“I’m sorry?”

Victor leaned into the light, his raccoon eyes puffing many shades of purple. He snuffled on blood, swallowed.

“Pitt had you kidnapped,” he said, “because he thought you’d want to be here.”

“You keep saying that, but all I see are a bunch of self-righteous volunteers in orange-and-red sheets.”

“Here you can find the redemption that you seek.”

I lifted one side of the chess table. The teapot and chessboard crashed to the floor. “No redemption here,” I said. “Hello-o?” I hollered. “Redemption? Woof-woof? Doggy treat, big boy?”

“Stop the American evil.” Victor’s voice was sharp now. “Send it back where it belongs. Turn the tide on the forces of imperialism, be part of something great. The greatest thing to ever happen to mankind.”

I frowned. “That’s not a war you can win. That’s why I left the States in the first place.”

“You cannot escape them,” he said quietly. “Their monstrous reach extends to every corner of the globe.”

“Tempting,” I said. “Find brick wall. Apply forehead. Tally ho!”

He took a picture from his pocket and held it out to me. A pretty blonde woman, mid-thirties, and a girl, obviously her daughter, aged twelve or so.

“See this?”

“Your favorite whores?”

I didn’t see the hand coming. My cheek burned. I blinked a couple of times. I thought about slugging him back, but decided I deserved the slap. “Not prostitutes then,” I said.

“They are my family, Horace,” Victor said. His face was intense. “The Americans killed them.”

“Bullet, blade or bomb?” I asked.

His hand shook. He put the picture back into his shirt pocket. He said, “Blade. A not very sharp one, either.”

“Oh,” I said. It leaked out against my will. “I’m sorry.”

“First the CIA tortured them. With a rusty steak knife. In front of me. These very eyes, Horace.” He chewed his lip. A trickle of blood ran down his chin. “Then the Americans raped them. And when I still refused to talk, they hung them from the ceiling by their toes and set them both on fire.” He rubbed an eye. “The screams…they made me watch.”

A bubble of silence surrounded us. I spoke first.

“Why would they do something like that? Are you a dissident?”

His fingers threaded together and apart. “I made a great discovery, Horace.” He lifted his chin. “I am a geologist. I found a way to harness the Earth’s energy. For peaceful purposes. But they wanted me to make a terrible weapon. That uses the Earth’s own power for destruction. I refused.”

“So how come you’re still alive?”

He tapped his temple. “Because of what’s in here. They kill me, they will never know the secret.”

“What’s the weapon?”

He shook his head sadly. “That will go with me to the grave.”

“And now you want your revenge, is that it?”

He sat back, examined his fingernails. “I have passed beyond the revenge chakra, my friend. Gaia shall exact true justice on our oppressors. I seek only peace in what little time remains to me.”

I chuckled. “With a little help from a brigade of activist monks armed to the teeth, is that it?”

“You like what you see here?” Victor asked.

“You mean living in a cave?” I said. “Not really, no.”

“Horace.” His eyebrows narrowed. “We do, actually. We ask only to be left alone. And a war would destroy this. All of it.”

“But we’re on the Peruvian side of the lake,” I objected.

“You think that’s going to make a difference when the shooting war starts?”

“Look,” I said. I drank my tea. It burned its way into my belly. “Everybody’s got to die. Nothing I can do about it.”

“Just one man, Horace.” Victor sat back, his face now in darkness. “One man can save the world. One man can destroy it. Which man are you?”

“Funny. Ambo told me the same thing. Although according to him the world can’t be saved.”

“He was half-right,” Victor said with a smile. “It only takes one man. You’re more powerful than you realize.”

“You’re both wrong,” I said. “Hell, I can’t even save myself. How am I supposed to save the world?”

“It is by saving the world that you save yourself. The work is the cure.”

I sneezed. “Bullshit.”

Victor’s head bowed, the crown of his head in the light. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

Guilt tugged at my soul, buried itself like a frightened chipmunk in my astral carry-on baggage.
What’s an extra gram,
I thought,
when you’re carrying multiple metric tons.

“It’s none of my concern.” I drained my chai, let the empty cup crash to the floor at my feet. “They want to kill each other? I say, let them.”