The Jaguar (15 page)

“What we need is a way to talk to her, Mike. If we can talk, we can make a plan. Without a plan, it’s just bullets and blood.”

“I’m working on this. Believe me, I am working on it.”

They clinked glasses and drank. Bradley was not a rum man but it was sweet and whole and the lemon finished it cleanly.

“Bradley, have you by any chance mentioned our friendship to Charlie Hood?”

“Why would I do that?”

“That is not what I asked.”

“I said I wouldn’t. I haven’t and I won’t.” Bradley tucked the leather folder onto his lap and lifted his glass to Finnegan.

An hour later the bottle was half gone and Finnegan had joined a pack of stevedores up by the bar. He was shouting out something about all the gold still left here in Veracruz and why the lazy people on this part of Earth had failed to extract it. Someone laughed and pushed him and Mike laughed and drove a finger into the man’s chest and rocked him back. Then he was up at the counter buying drinks and when Bradley looked above the tavern mirror at the same Taberna Roja sign that hung outside, he saw that the jolly man with the booze on his tray looked a bit like Mike. Red cheeks and curly red hair. El Rojo. Bradley shook his head and added a handful of ice to his glass and set the leather folder on the table before him and looked again at the maps of where Erin was being held. This is what connects me to you, he thought: a map drawn by a man I hardly know and barely trust.

Looking down at the maps he thought that the jungle might be an ally rather than an enemy. Yes, Armenta and his people knew the jungle, but if it was as dense and steep as Mike had said, then it could hide things even from those who knew it. Bradley thought that they could get close to the Castle without being seen. Yes, through the unfenced jungle. With a finger he traced the road coming in, then tapped the triangle representing the guardhouse. Using his pocketknife he estimated the distance from the garrison in the jungle to the Castle proper to be half a mile, based on Mike’s scale. If we were quiet, he thought, and Erin could meet us, we could steal her away before anyone knew she was gone. Silence. Cunning. The Caribbean Sea was less than half a mile east. Laguna Guerrero a third of a mile to the west. Trails. There must be at least game trails. Or, water. Come from the water and leave by water. Chetumal was close enough if they could get a decent boat. Chetumal also had an airport. Bacalar was near the lagoon, and very near the highway leading northwest to Merida. Merida: crowds, a consulate, an airport, safety. The same for Cancún. He sipped the rum without taking his eyes from the maps.

Or we can think about using the road, he thought. Be simple and pure and audacious. Surely, if the Castle was locked in the middle of jungle, then it required occasional deliveries of goods and services. Food? Propane? Water? Building materials? Landscape and pool maintenance? Painting? Mosquito abatement? He thought: If I could talk to her she could tell me who comes and goes. If she could get free for just a minute, for just a few seconds, I could get her on her way home before Armenta knew a thing.
If…

He looked at Finnegan, now pushing drinks down the bar toward two men who appeared ready to fight. In his red warm-ups and deck shoes and Navy cap, shouting, his face flushed and his eyes asparkle with whatever high emotions now ran through him, Mike looked ridiculous. But even wearing an expensive-looking suit, as he had worn the other night at El Dorado, Mike still looked ridiculous, thought Bradley, and he wondered if Mike’s strenuous efforts to know things and to influence people and to seem important were all attempts to cover this. The little-dog complex. Owens had said that Mike was insane and Bradley had never doubted it. And what did it say about himself that Mike was his greatest ally in this, the most weighted journey of his life?

Through the windows Bradley could see a couple running in the wind and the first drops of rain hit the glass and the bottom of the Taberna Roja sign swaying on its stout iron rod. We will be that couple someday, he thought, Erin and I will run through the rain together again, alive and free and we will never come back to the hell of Mexico again. Never.

Mike was back at the table adding ice to their glasses, then pouring the last of the rum into them.

“No sense leaving now with the rain starting up,” he said, smiling.

“None,” said Bradley.

Mike held up the empty bottle and Pao left the drink he was making
and brought over a fresh one and another bucket of ice. “What are you thinking, young son of Murrieta?”

“Don’t call me that. Can we get a satellite phone to her?”

“They say that Armenta is phobic about phones of all kinds,” said Mike. “Only he and his trusted few can have one. So, we can smuggle something in to her, but the question then becomes, can she keep it? What sort of wrath would she receive? They’ll search. They’ll find her things. Oh, Brad. I almost forgot. I’ve got something else for you here in my bag of tricks.”

Finnegan hopped down and lifted one of the bags to the stool and searched through it. From down in a corner he produced a small metal tube and handed it to Bradley.

At first Bradley thought it was a gun cartridge casing but it was far too light and there was an odd clasp affixed to one side. He held the clasp and twisted one end of the tube open. Inside was stuffed some kind of cloth. He worried it out with his pocketknife blade and it dropped to the tabletop. He unrolled the material, fine silk or maybe a sheer linen, and it became a square approximately five by five inches and covered with Erin’s tight cursive writing in blue ink.

Bradley felt the great rush of tears and he couldn’t stop them. There she was. Her hand had written this to him. She was alive and
well and so was their son. The tears of joy and hope burned his eyes as he stared down at her words. “God, this is great news.”

“I’m glad to deliver it to you.”

“What’s Owens doing with Armenta?”

“They’ve known each other for years.”

“You smuggled her a homing pigeon?”

“Three of them. Actually, I
had
them smuggled to her by an underpaid Quintana Roo propane delivery man. I’ll certainly introduce you to him, but to be truthful I was never confident that he’d complete his mission.”

“You never told me you kept pigeons.”

Mike gave him a boy’s grin. “Oh, forever.”

A possibility hit him, and Bradley wiped the tears with his hand and flicked them onto the tavern table. “The propane guy also brought three of Armenta’s birds out for you. Because we need some that will fly back to the Castle. Right?”

“Yes,” said Mike, his eyes sparkling with glee. “I am so proud of me sometimes.”

“Then we have a way to contact her.”

“Well, three ways. Would you like to see them?”

Bradley slipped the leather map folder between his belt and the small of his back, then pulled on his rain jacket. Mike stashed the newly arrived bottle of rum in one of his book bags then snugged the folded plastic lawn bags against the rain. He looked up at Bradley and gestured at the door like a butler, palm up, scar not visible to Bradley in the poor tavern light.

M
IKE
’
S APARTMENT WAS ON AN
alley several blocks north and east, off of M. Doblado. It was in the
zona historico,
the oldest part of a very old city. Bradley had trouble keeping up with the little man as he barreled along the narrow streets and by the time they were climbing the stone steps to the front door the rain had slackened and the wind died down.

Inside the apartment smelled of seawater and ancient rock. “Built in eighteen-forty-eight,” said Mike. “For Veracruz, practically brand- new. One hundred and one years before Woodrow Wilson’s attack. Downstairs was a livery and upstairs the residence. Retrofitted for running water and electricity. Later a hostel.”

As the lights fluttered on in the foyer Bradley saw that the main room had a high ceiling and there was a balcony that faced east toward the Gulf of Mexico. The windows had been left open and the wind and rain easily blew in past the grates and swayed what looked like very old drapes.

Finnegan unslung the book bags and pulled the windows closed and motioned Bradley to follow. They passed a small kitchen lit by a very weak bulb. The hallway was long and made of hardwood that creaked under Bradley’s boots. They passed a bedroom on the right and another to the left, then they climbed a narrow wooden stairway and Mike was talking as he headed up.

“Yoo-hoo, my fine feathered friends. It’s just me again, your favorite creature, bringing someone very special here to meet you.”

He turned and drew Bradley by his arm into the room.

“My flock, meet the son of Murrieta!”

Bradley stepped into a half-story, smelled the green stink of caged birds, saw the head-high coop that stretched from wall to wall, saw the bursts of feathers and seed as the animals flapped and dodged. Their alarm spread quickly through the enclosure, then just as quickly it was gone and the birds, Bradley guessed maybe twenty in all, settled on their nests and perches and peered out at the men with the curiosity of pigeons everywhere.

Mike was smiling. First at the birds and then at Bradley, then at the birds again.

“I’ll bet each one has a name,” said Bradley.

“Well, that’s Jason in the corner there, and beautiful Ambrosia on her nest.”

“It’s a hobby?”

“It’s one more way to see the world.”

Bradley looked around the spacious room. The floor was more brick-red tile and the ceiling paint was peeling. The walls were lined with bookcases to a height of about six feet, and the cases were full. Bradley recognized some of the languages on the spines. Above the shelves the walls were festooned with weapons and devices apparently made for torture, all very old. There was a leather recliner with a colorful serape flung across the back, and a reading lamp beside it. There was a long wooden table in the middle of the room and a wheeled chair. The table was cluttered with books and magazines and sketchbooks and large graph-paper blotters strangled by doodles and notations. A laptop computer sat closed on the blotter. Beside it was a small earthen dish containing a handful of message
containers for the pigeons. Some looked well used and others nearly new. There was a short stack of fabric squares similar to the one that Erin had written on.

“You communicate with other fanciers?”

“Do I ever! Of the twenty-four birds in there right now, only six are actually my own. Released from anywhere, within reason, they’ll fly right back to me bearing the messages of my friends and associates. The other eighteen belong to friends I’ve made over time. We exchange a few here and there when we meet, so we always have an adequate flock.”

“What do you write to each other about?”

“The Earth and everything upon it.”

“For about the same cost as a cell phone, I’d guess. Once you figure in the food and grit and vitamins and vet bills and—”

“Quite a bit cheaper, actually, and of course they breed for free, just like people. But it’s not about cost. It’s not even really about communication. It’s about the medium itself. The medium is the message, as we’ve been taught, so it follows that a slow method of communication will reveal different meanings than a fast one. You get very different rewards when you compose longhand and deliver your brief notes on the wings of birds! You get shorter, more compact thoughts and ideas. You get ideas that are, well, smaller but larger. And this relative slowness with which they are delivered really does nothing to impede the flow of conversation about Earth’s important events because, as you know, important events almost never happen quickly. Earthquakes and spectacular accidents aside.”

“You’re talking like, geology and history.”

“Not
like
them. They
themselves.
I’m quite drunk. Shall we have another? Listen to that rain coming down out there. The lovely Ivana is most assuredly on her way now.”

“She’s aimed at the Yucatán,” said Bradley. “At Erin.”

Mike looked into the coop and pointed at a white-and-tan bird studying him from its perch. “He is one of Armenta’s birds. I have named him Samson. I will bet that Samson here can fly back home through any hurricane.”

“We have to beat the storm.”

Mike went to the desk and took a square of fabric from the top of the stack and cleared the books away and set it down on the blotter. From the middle drawer he brought a pen box and opened it and set it beside the fabric.

“It’s up to you, Bradley.”

“This is going to take a while.”

“I would think so. You have only twenty-five square inches on each side, so you must clear your thoughts, condense your language, and solicit specific information that will allow you to form a plan. A plan that cannot fail.”

“Would you make me a pot of coffee?”

“The best and strongest in all of Veracruz.”

“The rum will keep.”

“It always does.”

“We’re going to get her back, Mike.”

“I could see in the tavern that you were giving it some serious thought.”

Bradley set the maps on the desk, then sat and took the pen and flattened the fabric so it would take the ink evenly. He pored over the drawings of the Castle and the compound and the surrounding land and lagoon and sea. “The maps help. The maps show us the way. But they can’t give us the way.”

“No. You must conjure that with words on silk.”

“She has to meet me outside the Castle. It’s either that or a gun battle. I can’t take that chance. I need to know where to find her,
that’s the main thing. Outside the Castle. I can be there if I only know where
there
is.”

“Tell her what you need to know, Bradley. And please, save me a little room at the end. I’ll write something brief to Owens. Owens can help.”