The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller (24 page)

Sixteen

The dinner hour.

Cauldrons bubbled over wood fires on the smooth pebbles high on the beach. Victor brought me here, put a bowl in my hands, then excused himself. I stood in line, a single file of silent monks. A cold wind blew. I shivered. The monks were dressed in less than I was, but either did not feel the cold, or pretended not to.

I shuffled forward, my boots hissing against the small stones. My body was in agony from lack of my usual medications. Food might help me think more clearly. I had agreed to wait until tomorrow to see if Pitt would show up. Not that I had much choice in the matter. Where was I going to go?

I tapped the monk ahead of me in line. Asked, “You guys been here long?”

He looked over his shoulder, wagged his finger at me, put it to his lips.

“What, no talkie-talkie? Moron.”

My turn came at the canteen. A fat monk spooned rice into my bowl. His face shone with sweat. It trickled down his chin, dripped into the pot beneath him. He scooped some broth over my rice. I looked up, expecting more.

“That all?”

But his frantic waving told me to move along, that he too could or would say nothing.

The monks scattered across the beach. They sat along the shore, watching the moon hover over Isla del Sol.

“Hey! Everyone!” I shouted. I waved my arms to get their attention. Thirty or so shaved heads regarded me in silence. “I’m looking for my friend Pitt! Any of you seen him? No? No one? Anyone?”

They shook their heads in unison, brought their fingers to their lips. “Goddamn deluded idiots,” I said, and plopped myself down in the sand.

No chopsticks, no spoon. As I puzzled over the best way to eat my meager meal, a monk sat in the sand a few feet away. Blue denim peeked out at his ankles. So that was how they kept warm.

The broth scalded my tongue. I scooped up a wad of rice, burning my fingertips, juggled it against my molars, relishing the pain. The monk at my side stopped eating. He watched the food travel from bowl to mouth.

“Have
you
seen Pitt?” I asked, breathing steam.

Pitt?
He mouthed the word, then said it out loud. “Pitt?”

“You talk?”

“Shh!” He pointed. I followed his gaze. A fire burned at the far end of the beach. Victor and Kate knelt, studying what appeared to be a map. The master monk sat near them, his elaborate headdress adding an extra two feet to his height. The whip curled over his shoulder.

“So what’s the deal?” I said. “No one wants to talk to me.”

“I’m just a volunteer,” he said, voice barely audible. He looked out over the water, bowl under his chin, lips barely moving.

“Volunteer. Is that the word.” I opened my mouth wide, letting the cold air soothe my burnt palate. “Bunch of morons, you ask me.”

“They haven’t brainwashed you then.” He picked at his food.

“I’m sorry?” I said, and studied him, but his face was low over his bowl. I looked back. The master monk walked along the beach toward us, arms crossed over his chest.

The monk passed. I turned again to my dinner companion.

“Can’t say I see the appeal, no.” I lowered my voice. “You don’t sound like the others. What happened? The brainwashers missed a spot?”

He kept his eyes on the ground, moved his lips imperceptibly. “Let’s just say I’m beginning to have my doubts.”

I swallowed a mouthful of rice. “You really think Victor can stop the war?”

The guy choked on his soup. The monk with the whip looked sharply at us for a long moment. I waved. He looked away.

“Is
that
what he told you,” the guy muttered.

“What,” I said, “you mean, there’s more?”

He leaned his head toward the fire, toward Victor and Kate. “Get a hold of that map. See if you can—”

“Michael!”

My eating buddy swallowed, an audible gulp of unchewed food.

“Bowl down. On feet.” The accent was thick, strange, Asian. The same I’d heard in the van.

Michael stood. He covered his ass with his hands.

“Vow silence, Michael. When you learn?” The master monk stood between us. The whip dangled from his hand. It resembled Sergio’s cat-o’-nine-tails. Four feet long, a dozen strips of leather ending in twists of barbed wire. He said, “Ten strokes.”

Michael reached under his robes, unsnapped his jeans. He pushed them down to his ankles. He lifted his robes, exposing his bare cheeks. He took the whip, hefted it in one hand.

“One,” he said. He whipped the instrument over his shoulder. It dug into the skin. He yanked it free, and bits of gore flecked onto the sand.

“Two.”

In slow strokes he slashed at his exposed flesh. Blood poured from deep gashes. He counted to ten, numbering each stroke, but otherwise made no sound.

The robes slipped to the ground. He bowed toward the master monk, returned the whip.

The monk bowed back. “Flesh weak. Mortal. Must teach it, obey. Then, mind free.”

Michael closed his eyes, nodded. He stepped out of his jeans, draped them over his shoulder. He bent down for his bowl of food, but the master monk kicked it away, spilling the broth in the sand.

The beach. Later. The man in the moon hid behind the gathering clouds, ashamed to look at us. Kate sat on the sand at my side. It was cold. We hugged our knees with our arms. The night was a long, bitter silence between us. I spoke first. I knew the answer before I opened my mouth, but said it anyway.

“We could try again. Have another child.”

“No!”

There was fury in her voice, the untouchable righteous anger that had once drawn me to her. Smite all injustice, tear down the corrupt, rebuild the world anew. Her impossible idealism had been the perfect counterpoint to my cynicism.

Until La Paz.

“We are but a speck of dirt on Gaia. We are cockroaches,” she exploded, in answer to my unspoken question.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d agree with that.”

“No,” she said. Her finger out, instructive. “An infection. A disease. We are leeches sucking the life force from this planet.” She put her lips an inch from my ear. “A liver fluke. A brain parasite.”

I did not turn. I stared at Isla del Sol. One by one the lights on the island went out. I wondered if Pitt really was over there. If he was looking back at us right now. If he felt the same way.

“Parasites,” I said, and imagined myself as groin lice on an ugly whore.

She followed my gaze. “Yes. Parasites. We deserve to die.”

“I suppose we do.”

“All of us.”

“Absolutely.”

The memories flooded in. I could no longer hold back the images, the torn, shredded cries that lingered in my soul.

“This ends here.” She stabbed my knee with her finger. “With me. I will not spread the infection any further.”

“Is that why you’re with him? With—” I forced the word out, like a tough turd. “With Victor? Playing activist? Stopping a war?”

She rested her chin on her knees. “Wars are petty things. They do not interest me. I think only in the end of days, and the care of my soul.”

“End of days. Care of your soul.” I stared at her in profile, her forehead hard and white in the moonlight. “It’s just a stupid fucking war. What is this talk of apocalypse? You expecting a pale horse?”

“No,” she said, looking dreamily at the stars. “The apocalypse will be man-made. It will be an enormous, global orgy of self-destruction, a long asphyxiation on exhaust pipe fumes, and coal plant dust, and heavy metal poisoning. In our greed and ambition we will achieve only death.”

I found myself in the unexpected role of devil’s advocate to a cynic. “Is there no hope? Treaties, and all that. Stop global warming?”

“No,” she said. “There is no hope. Man is an evil, base creature who deserves to die. Deep down we all know that. Understand that. We deserve to be punished. Can’t you see?”

She turned to face me now, lips close enough to feel her hot breath on my cheek.

“And Gaia will punish us,” I suggested, with a laugh that withered on my lips.

“She will.” Kate looked at the stars again, nodded her head. “Oh, she will. All equally. And all just as fatally.”

I remember holding Lili in my arms for the first time. How she howled! The sweetest sound I ever heard. Everything was new. Everything was different. We were pioneers in a world of delight. Diapers? What a wonderful surprise! Weeks without sleep? No problem! The world was young and we were in it and we were happy.

After a couple of months, we got restless. Twelve-hour days running the hostel followed by twelve-hour nights with the baby exhausted us both. And diapers soon lost their luster.

“Take a week off,” Alex had shouted across a throng of backpackers. “Hell, take a month off. You’ve earned it.”

So we did. We came to Lake Titicaca. Stayed a week on Isla del Sol. Warm days, cold nights. Kate nursed. Slept. I hiked the island, admiring the never-ending views. One could live here, I thought, peaceful till the end of days.

It had been Kate’s idea to visit the island. She had studied anthropology, and was fascinated by the Incan death cults. When she was strong enough, she’d traipse around the island in the afternoons, visiting archaeological sites and practicing her Quechua on the local llama herders.

The Incas, she told me breathlessly one night as we struggled toward orgasm, had a deluge story, like in the Bible.

“You mean like Noah.”

“Like that,” she groaned. “Yes, like that. One day the volcanoes will erupt.”

“Which volcanoes?”

“All of them. At the same time. Yes. Like that.” She quivered, gasped, lay back on her pillow. “And it will herald the end of the world.”

“Sounds deep,” I said.

She giggled. Stretched her arms over her head. “Lake Titicaca will evaporate, and the island will become a mountain in a dropless sea.”

“What a seriously downer take on life,” I said.

“Isn’t it, though?”

That was when we got the email. From Greg and Luisa.
Cross the border. Let’s party!

Some party.

The hostel in La Paz. Lili asleep in the borrowed crib. I stroke her forehead. Turn back to Kate. “Just for a few hours. You need a break. She’ll be fine.”

“But are you sure?” She frowns at me, forehead crinkled.

Greg drains his beer and belches. “You lucked out, mate. Didn’t even know he had a sister.”

“If you say so,” she says, and buries her nose in my neck.

“Couple hours,” I say. “Back at ten.” I put my arms around her waist. “What could go wrong?”

Chicken curry sparkles on my tongue, the best I’ve had in ages. Candle wax curls in swirls of multicolored bliss down the sides of a Chianti bottle. Kate lifts her glass in a toast to the world: to motherhood, Liliana, me.

“May you have many more!” Greg yells, already shitfaced.

“Maybe we should have one, darling,” Luisa says, fingers plucking at the back of Greg’s thinning hair.

While they smooch, I lead Kate to the tiny dance floor. I’m not a fan of amplified pan pipe music, but right now I’m so happy I don’t care. Her hand in mine, my palm cupping the curve of her spine, her lips at my throat, we sway to the music, the rhythm pulsing through us, making us one with the universe.

Back at the table, Greg and Luisa argue. He’s drunk. No he’s not.

“Don’ wan’ no water,” he mumbles at the top of his lungs.

“I’m not cleaning up your puke tonight.” Luisa pushes a glass of water toward him.

He huffs and frowns, head lolling on his shoulders. He reaches for the water glass, knocks it over. Kate shrieks as the cold water lands in her lap. We jump up, mopping the spill with a fistful of paper napkins.

“Sorry,” Greg mutters, eyes glazed. “Sorry, sorry, I—”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” Kate is unfazed. Nothing can ruin her night out. She is happy. “What’s the time?”

Greg studies his watch, cogitation slowing to a crawl. “It is,” he announces, lips parting carefully, readying the words, “almost two o’clock.”

Later than we thought.

A rusty taxi with holes in the floor grinds up the cobblestone hill to the hostel. The night guard doesn’t answer the bell. We shiver in the bitter air. What could have happened? What’s going on?

“Relax,” I say, as much to myself as to her.

Kate’s grip tightens on my arm. Carlos comes to the gate, buckling his belt. Runs a fat finger under his nose, wipes away a ring of white powder, pops it in his mouth. From an upper window a woman peers out, clutching a blanket to her chest.

Kate has been holding her breath. “Oh thank goodness.”

“Disculpeme,
Don Gregorio,” Carlos says, and scratches his crotch. “I sleep poorly. The baby.”

Kate tenses at my side. “The baby? Whose baby. Our baby?”

“What a set of lungs, that kid. Finally shut his yap so I can sleep.”

Kate surges up the stairs. Greg vomits in the toilet. Luisa lays a finger on my arm. “We had fun,” she says. “We’re glad you came.”

“We’re glad we came too,” I say. A tired smile dimples my cheeks. “It was a good night.”

A feral shriek above stiffens my spine. I scramble after Kate, taking the stairs two at a time, tripping, drunken, cracking my shins against the bare boards. Kate screams again.

“I’m coming!” I shout.

“What’s the matter?” Luisa behind me.

I gasp for breath, stumble along the hallway, my hand on the wall. I lean into our room, shoulder on the door frame. Kate is bending over the crib.

“Baby, what’s going on?” I ask.

A rat runs across my foot. Two more follow. They stagger down the hallway, skin stretched tight across their bloated bellies.

“What the hell?” Luisa says.

Kate takes another breath, exhales a screech so sharp it hurts my ears.

“You’ll wake the other guests,” Greg grumbles drunkenly in the doorway, wiping vomit from his lips. “What are you—”

But I stand next to Kate now, looking down at the crib. Looking down at Liliana.

Or what is left of her.

We sat cross-legged on the sand. Kate stared across the lake, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. I wondered if she was thinking about that night, too.

It was freezing but she wasn’t wearing gloves. I pulled off a mitten with my teeth, took her hand in mine. Squeezed. Her frozen claw crushed my fingers, as though unsure what to do with the sudden warmth. A drop of water splashed the back of my hand. Was it mine? No. Was it hers? Her dry cheeks reflected the merciless moonlight.