The Bergamese Sect (49 page)

He mouthed an apology at the seller and turned down the road, back toward the centre of the city. Back toward the hotel.

Above, the sky was a blanket of featureless grey, unusual for August, and the high-altitude air felt cool. Rain was threatened, but the glowering sky didn’t dampen Lewis’ spirit. He felt good, in control, and he was determined to enjoy it. At least while it lasted.

Miami had been a textbook operation. He still couldn’t believe it had gone so well. The decoys had been convincing, the timing superb. After they’d disappeared into the jet bridge, Lewis had watched the girl’s protectors run from the departure gate of the San Francisco flight. Out into the check-in area, toward the ticket desks. There was little panic on their faces. As they’d lined up to buy tickets, one of them had made a phone call, obviously updating their mentors.

Safely concealed, the real targets had been watching TV in room 122, preparing their bags for the flight to Lima. Again, the timing had been perfect. Lewis smiled at the thought of his good fortune. No, it wasn’t good fortune, he told himself. It was his own skill, his sheer hard work that had paid off.

The flight to Peru, and then on to Cusco, had been uneventful. It was easy to doze when your target would need a parachute to escape your grasp. They’d arrived in Cusco late morning, the group immediately checking into a pricy hotel in the centre of the city. They’d gone straight to their rooms after the long journey, not noticing the tall shadow that followed them into the lobby.

After a few hours rest, Lewis had gone out to explore, to reconnoitre. He felt safe to leave the group at the hotel. He still had the tracking device on the girl’s bag. In Miami, he’d taken other steps to tighten his grip. For a brief moment, the girl had left her bag unattended in the departure lounge, drawn from her seat by a rack of lifestyle magazines. With breath-taking speed and deftness, Lewis had whipped the SIM card from her mobile, cracked open the case of her bulky satellite phone and removed a couple of key capacitors from the circuitry. It only disabled direct communication in one direction, but that might be enough. Besides, it was already too late for her superiors to act. If Sewell’s order came to kill the target, or Sebastian, Lewis would be standing right behind her.

On the way back to the hotel, Lewis found the tourist office on the second floor of a small white building. He bounded up the stairs and pushed through a black door standing on a balcony edged with wrought-iron railings.

A girl sat on a sofa drinking coffee. She stood and welcomed him as he came in.

‘
I’m looking for information about Cotacoca,’ Lewis said.

‘
The Inca site?’ she asked.

Lewis wondered how many Cotacocas there were in Peru. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘
I no have information about that,’ the girl said in broken English. ‘It is remote, in the mountains. About ninety kilometres. I think you get there from Choquequirao. You can hire guide in Cachora, I think.’

Lewis nodded and took a few maps the girl had grabbed from a rack of leaflets.

He returned to the street and made his way toward the central square. Dodging through the traffic, he stopped on a grassed area opposite a huge church of brown stone. He took out the girl’s maps and leafed through them. They were all schematics, designed for the tourist who took the bus everywhere. Adventurers who went nowhere but the Sacred Valley and the lost city of Machu Picchu. Useless.

He crossed the road again and walked along a street of run-down apartment blocks. Screaming children played barefoot in the dirt. They wore mostly jeans and sweaters, but some were dressed in traditional Quechua outfits; bright shawls trimmed with checkerboard designs, tasselled and embroidered skirts and tunics. Broad, flat hats of red cloth. They ran along with him until he reached a junction, laughed and ran off again.

Lewis wondered where Walsh and Linsky were right now. He’d finally got a charger to fit his mobile after they’d landed in Lima. He’d sat in the transfer lounge charging up, then had tried Walsh’s mobile. But it was unavailable. Typical. So, as planned, he’d left a note for Harry Westport at the Alamo desk out front. It didn’t say much. They were heading for Cusco, would be in whichever hotel the group chose. That was it.

After another block, Lewis came across a bookshop and went in to find a decent map of the Vilcabamba area. The shop was large. A fresh-faced girl stood behind the counter and an elderly man was browsing the shelves.

Lewis found a trail guide written for ardent walkers. It included a good map of the area north of Cachora – the Apurimac and Yanama river valleys. A small cross marked the site of Cotacoca, but there appeared to be no trail leading to the remote spot. He took the book to the girl at the counter and handed over a few notes. She smiled, popped the book in a brown paper bag, and slid the money into a wooden drawer under the desk.

Lewis turned toward the door and noticed a rack of newspapers against the wall. One in particular drew him to its cover photograph. He stepped forward, grabbed a copy of
Tiempos del Mundo
and whipped it out of the rack.

The photograph was a mush of dark colour, spotted with an occasional island of bright red or yellow. There were flames, blackened areas of scorched ground, and wreckage strewn randomly. Thick smoke that reminded him of quick-moving ocean fog was billowing through dry bushes, obscuring the hills in the distance. Here and there, little red flags poked up from the black earth and a yellow-black striped cordon surrounded sharp, twisted metal. A child’s doll, half its face charred into plastic dribbles, sat forlornly amid the carnage.

Lewis’ eyes searched for recognisable words of explanation among the foreign text. He scanned over the story quickly. A coldness swept across his scalp as his eyes rested on the words he feared he’d see.

America West 879. Miami. Las Vegas. 105 muertos
.

105 muertos!

‘
Shit!’ he breathed. They’d killed them all! Murdered a planeload of innocent people in cold blood. A face appeared in his mind’s eye. Of a girl he’d seen glance flirtatiously at him on a Miami street. He’d sent her to her death, as well as scores of others.

No secret was worth that. No conspiracy, however damaging to the human psyche, could atone for those hundred bodies falling from a cold sky, their fatty flesh burning odiously like paraffin lamps. A terrifying thought occurred to him. Had they died instantly? Had they crossed over into blackness untouched by terror or pain? Or did they spin, screaming, tumbling through the thunderous night, still strapped to seats engulfed by the firestorm? Watching the unforgiving earth rush to meet them.

He threw the newspaper on the counter, slammed his fist down on the hideous image of carnage. ‘Shit!’ he said again.

―
§ ―

The phone rang. Lewis jumped to the desk and picked up the receiver. ‘Yeah?’

‘
Mr Diaz?’ a voice said, heavily accented.

‘
Who?’

‘
Mr Diaz?’

‘
Oh, yes,’ Lewis said slowly.

‘
One moment please; I have a call for you.’ There was a shuffling noise on the line.

‘
Jeff? Walsh.’ The voice was calm.

‘
Walsh? Where are you?’

‘
We’re standing in the lobby. Is it safe to come up?’

‘
Sure. Room 312.’

Lewis hung up, went over to the window and stared down the dimly lit back street. It was calm. Above, an orange glow from the city projected a circle of diffuse light on the low cloud. He grabbed the curtains and drew them, shutting out the dismal night.

Two minutes later, there was a soft tap at the door. Lewis checked the security bolt was engaged then prised the door open a couple of inches. It was Walsh, Linsky and another man.

He let them in. Walsh and Linsky barged into the centre of the room, dumping some bags on the floor, but the stranger walked like a nervous dog entering a new kennel. Slowly and deliberately.

‘
This is David Castro,’ said Walsh. The man reached out and shook Lewis’ hand, but didn’t say a word. ‘We saved David from Sewell’s henchmen in New York,’ Walsh continued. ‘He’s an abductee. He’s been searching for the truth.’

‘
I thought you said there were two men,’ Lewis said.

Walsh had a sheepish look to him. ‘We didn’t get the other one. I’m afraid it may be too late for him.’

Castro didn’t react to Walsh’s admission. He threw his coat on the bed, then slumped himself into a chair by the bathroom door. Lewis thought he looked like a cancer patient, so pale and drawn was his face. There was a black line around his eyes, and below them, soft pads of purple skin made him look like a reanimated corpse. Black hair, that parted in the middle, flopped over his brow, just far enough to look messy.

Walsh was hanging his coat on a hanger from the cupboard. ‘Well, Lewis? What do you have for us?’ he asked.

Lewis sat on the bed and crossed his legs. ‘The target’s on the fifth floor; the girl and her accomplice in separate rooms on the seventh. They haven’t moved much since we arrived this morning. The accomplice went out for a while this afternoon. I think he was looking for information about this Inca site in the mountains.’

‘
What do we know about this site?’

‘
I’ll come to that. They certainly don’t seem to be in any rush to leave Cusco. I guess they think they just need to get there now; that nobody’s going to interfere with them. Our spike is still on the girl so they won’t be leaving without us.’

‘
Okay, so we need to organise a watch on her room. Does your tracking device have an alarm? A beeper or something?’

‘
No. But I’ve got a contact alarm for her door. I was just about to go up there and seal her in for the night when you called.’ Lewis released a crooked grin.

But the Assistant Director stared at him austerely, a dark look forming over his bumpy features. ‘Have you seen the news in the last twenty-four hours?’ he asked.

The smile vanished from Lewis’ face. He grabbed the newspaper from the bedside table, tossed it face up on the floor.

‘
You couldn’t have known, Jeff,’ Walsh said.

‘
Unavoidable casualties,’ Lewis replied coldly. ‘I know one thing. If I ever meet your saboteur, I’ll hit him so hard he’ll be eating through his ass.’

Walsh smiled. ‘Sure. Whatever happens now, I don’t think Sewell will be bothering us again. They’ll assume the target is dead.’

Linsky, who’d been standing against the wall, butted in. ‘Unless the girl contacts them herself,’ he pointed out.

Lewis uncrossed his legs and shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think she’ll do that. The last time she contacted Sewell she said she couldn’t risk ringing him again. She feared the others might discover her treachery. Plus, I’ve disabled her mobile and satellite phone. I also bribed the front desk to disable her line out of the hotel. I’ve done my best to isolate her, but I don’t think she’ll try to contact them now anyway. She’s got a more specific purpose to think about.’

‘
Do you know something?’ asked Walsh, frowning.

‘
Yeah. Sewell told her to eliminate Sebastian as soon as he’s found. There’s gonna be no debriefing for their traitor.’

Walsh looked pensive for a moment. And worried. Then he nodded. ‘Okay, so we have to stick very close to her, be there when they finally find him.’

‘
Hold on,’ said Linsky, now coming away from the wall. ‘Why don’t we just remove the girl’s threat? She isn’t in touch with her commanders and we know what she intends to do. We could just kill her, or incapacitate her, then follow the target to Sebastian.’

Walsh was shaking his head, pressing his lips together in an expression of doubt. ‘No, that’s too risky. We still know nothing about the dynamics of that group. She could be crucial in keeping the target focussed on his function. If we remove her, or interfere, it could upset the balance and lead him to abandon the hunt. We might not be able to convince him of our intentions before things fall apart. We could lose Sebastian for good.’

Lewis was nodding his head in agreement. ‘Plus, we still don’t know exactly where the trail ends. Sebastian told the target he’d find him in a shack at those ruins. But he might not be hiding out there. There may be more games of cat and mouse to play. We need the group kept together until they have him in their grasp. Then we can step in, remove him.’

‘
Yes,’ said Walsh. ‘And I’d like to remind everyone that we’re not in the business of shooting our way to the truth. If we can, we should keep some semblance of legality about this mission. If we can, we should avoid fatalities, including the girl. Is that understood?’ Walsh’s voice was serious, full of authority.

Lewis and Linsky both nodded.

Walsh came and sat on the only other vacant chair in the room. He slouched and propped himself up with his lower arms on the sides of the chair. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘what about this place in the mountains? How do we get there?’

Lewis took a long, deep breath. ‘It’s not gonna be easy. Involves hiking through the rain forest, across several mountains and down a steep river canyon. There’s not even a trail down to the site. That jungle’s pretty dense out there. And hot.’

Walsh let a huge sigh escape, looked at the ceiling and pulled his hands across his face. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘I’m too old for this.’

Linsky had a worried look on his face. ‘What’s this guy doing up there?’

‘
Waiting for his man,’ said Walsh. He looked over at Castro. ‘But I think he’s gonna get a big surprise when we show up.’

The others followed his gaze.

Castro stared back emotionless. ‘Can we eat?’ he said.

―
§ ―

Matt couldn’t sleep. The thin Andean air wasn’t helping, but it was more than that. He felt stifled by a growing nervousness. These weeks away from everything he knew to be stable, normal, were starting to take their toll. And probably, it was worsened by talk of the end of this enforced journey.