Thief (25 page)

“Not yet, but then again, I've been trying to talk with the ones who followed you to Sister Rachel. Maybe I should be looking for the four or five who stayed with him after we were gone.”

“Alonzo? Tito?”

“They're around, I'm sure. It's just going to be a matter of finding them.”

“Chanel?”

He hesitated. “She's good.”

“You haven't asked her?”

“It hasn't seemed like a good time.”

“You're probably right. Anyway, I'm on a ferry, heading up the Amazon.”

“Lucky you.”

“Santos is putting restrictions on using the sat phone, but I'll check for messages.”

“I know anything, I'll call,” Claudio promised. “Be safe.”

“Always,” Monarch said, and hung up.

He found Santos at the forward rail on the third deck. The light from the setting sun threw her in a copper glow that made her even more beautiful, and turned the river burnt red and the jungle a burnished bronze.

Gazing all around with enchanted eyes, she beamed with happiness.

“You like the jungle,” Monarch said.

“I love it.”

“Why?”

“It's just so old and so impossible to comprehend. It makes me feel small.”

Monarch watched her in profile, and had a hard time trying not to feel infatuated. But then he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and saw Todd Carson weaving through the crowd toward them, looking displeased to see Monarch with the scientist.

“I got you your Coke, Stella,” Carson said. “It's actually cold.”

Monarch turned from them when he noticed another ferry, smaller and faster, swing out wide from behind the ferry he was on, looking to pass. It too was packed with people and animals and cargo, but it was steadily overtaking the bigger vessel.

He saw several young kids waving from behind the rail on the foredeck of the faster boat, and their mothers and fathers and older siblings standing behind them. Monarch smiled, and then happened to glance beyond them into the shadows under a canvas awning stretched above the foredeck. At first he saw only the silhouette of a very large, very muscular man. If he'd blinked, that's all he would have seen.

But for a split second a thin beam from the setting sun shot through the shadows beneath the stretched canvas, lit the man up from his waist to the top of his head, and then died. Monarch felt confusion and anxiety pulse through him when he realized he wasn't going to get a better look at the man as the faster ferry went by.

He stared after it, wondering if what he'd seen was possible.

“You all right, Robin?” Santos asked. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“No,” he said. “Just the light playing tricks on me.”

Was that true? Had that brief slashing light just triggered an old and terrible memory, or had that really been Jason Dokken standing there?

The thief's mind went in reverse twelve years. Monarch saw Dokken, a Special Forces operator, cursing him for betrayal, and vowing revenge. The big black guy walking away from the private jet earlier had reminded him of someone. Dokken. The man had always had a distinctive posture and way of moving, easy, and with a lot of hip action, like a horse.

Was that Dokken on the boat and back at the airport? If so, why was he here of all places? Who were the guys he was with? And what were they doing here?

Monarch hadn't thought about Dokken in years. Wouldn't he still be serving out his sentence in Leavenworth? What did he get? Fifteen years? But it's only been twelve years since the court-martial.

Monarch had been released from Leavenworth after serving less than eight months of his sentence by agreeing to try to steal the Iraqi war plan in advance of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In return, he received a total commutation of his sentence.

But Dokken had been left to rot away the prime years of his manhood. He'd be, what? Late thirties now? Forty?

The thief got his satellite phone out again, leaned over the rail, and called Gloria. But John Tatupu picked up.

“You missing some Samoan?” Tatupu asked by way of greeting.

“Every day,” Monarch said, grinning. “Cold there?”

“Don't start with that,” Tatupu said. “Guys like me aren't meant for places like Switzerland. What's it there, a hundred in the shade?”

“Ninety at night,” Monarch said.

Tatupu groaned, but then said, “We're going to wait a few days before we try to take Hormel in for a little questioning. After Gloria's adventure in the woods, his security will be on full alert.”

Monarch would have much preferred Hormel being squeezed as soon as possible, and certainly before he got too deep in the jungle to react quickly to any news of Sister Rachel's location. But he knew Tatupu's strategy was sound.

“So I had something strange happen just a few minutes ago,” Monarch said. “I thought I saw Dokken go by me on a faster ferry.”

“Heat's getting to you,” Tatupu said. “Dokken's in Leavenworth.”

“You know that for sure?”

“That why you're calling Gloria?”

“Can't hurt to double-check.”

“I'll let her know soon as she wakes up,” Tatupu said.

“I appreciate it, Tats, and everything you all are doing for Sister.”

“You're welcome, but it's the least we can do.”

“Have Gloria message me when she finds out about Dokken.”

“Will do,” he said, and hung up.

Monarch was consumed in thought for much of the evening, wondering about Dokken, wondering about the odds of both Dokken and Vargas coming back into his life at the same time. That couldn't be a coincidence. They had to be acting on behalf of the same third party represented by Hormel and Pynchon.

Who was it? Who was the son of a bitch manipulating him? Whoever it was, the swine was going to pay, and pay big time.

When he and Rousseau returned to the hold for a second shift, it was still hot, but no longer a furnace. Monarch slept for much of his time on post. As soon as he got back on deck he booted up the satellite phone and saw an e-mail message from Barnett.

It read: “Dokken paroled for good behavior and was released from Leavenworth six months ago. Current whereabouts unknown.”

Monarch closed his eyes a moment, before muttering, “I know where he is. Probably ten miles upriver of me right now.”

Indeed, when the ferry docked at the small town of Coari, a good seven hours into the voyage, the smaller ferry had already stopped and sailed on.

Monarch couldn't sleep even after the two graduate students said the hold had cooled enough that they would stay down there the rest of the night. He stood at the rail and smelled the jungle and the river and grappled with the sense that events from long ago were coming back around to him.

Still troubled, he decided to take a walk. There were people sleeping everywhere on the decks, but they'd left paths between them that Monarch padded, lost in thought as the ferry trolled ever onward upriver.

The thief was down on the A deck around 3:00
A.M.
when he saw a great big slab of a man come up out of the gangway that led to the ladder down into the cargo hold. Monarch didn't recognize him. Or did he?

The man glanced at Monarch as if unconcerned, and brushed by him, heading the other way. The thief paused to look after him, but saw nothing familiar. Was he so tired he was imagining enemies everywhere now, all part of a vast conspiracy?

The area immediately around the gangway and over to the rail looked clear of bodies, and Monarch naturally gravitated to the space. But when he got on the other side of the bulwark, he bumped into cages holding chickens and other fowl.

Some of the birds began to softly squawk and cluck, making just enough noise to cover the sounds of footsteps. He didn't hear them until they were very close. The pace triggered a warning in his head, and he spun away from the birdcages.

The big dude who'd just come out of the hold was less than three feet away and closing fast. He held a knife with a wicked-looking black blade.

He had a reverse grip on the handle, and swung the blade as if he meant to bury it in Monarch's chest. The thief's reflexes took over. His left hand shot up and slapped the knife wielder's elbow before he could extend and slash down with his forearm, hand, and the point of blade. The slap deflected the line of the attack by inches. The tip of the blade barely touched Monarch's shirt and shoulder.

Monarch pivoted to his left, trying to close space, intent on grabbing the man's wrist and breaking his hold on the knife. His attacker was too quick. He spun with Monarch and elbowed him, striking him high on the right cheekbone.

The blow staggered Monarch, and he reeled backward, knocking over the cages. Chickens, ducks, and other fowl began to squawk loudly. People woke and shouted, adding to the din and alarm, but it didn't slow the guy with the knife in the least.

Sensing Monarch was shaken, he attacked again. In a backhand strike, he slashed at Monarch's torso.

The blade of Monarch's right hand chopped back, almost along the same line. The strike connected with a nerve bundle on the underside of the big guy's wrist. It stopped the arc of the blade, and almost caused him to drop the knife.

Monarch's attacker was clever though, and tossed the knife to his other hand, catching it by the handle in a more conventional grip, as if he were about to cut steak. The thief stepped around his back, trying to grab him by the hair and get hold of his left arm and the knife.

He tore a hunk of hair out of the man's scalp, but couldn't control his head. The big guy mule-kicked at Monarch, and missed before twisting low to face the thief.

Monarch saw he meant to drive the blade up under his rib cage. As he sprang, the thief lunged a full step backward toward the rail, seeing the blade miss his sternum and flash by his nose.

He snagged the man by his left wrist and belt then. He pivoted hard and to the inside, feeling the man's balance dissolve before hurling him off the side of the ferry.

 

34

MONARCH HEARD HIM CURSE
as he plunged headfirst fifteen feet into the murky water. The thief stood at the rail, panting, ignoring the squabbling of the chickens and the owners of the chickens who were now bitching at him in Portuguese, looking for the knife guy to appear in the glow of the ferry's running lights. But he saw nothing but the swirling Amazon and darkness.

When he finally left the rail, he glared at the chicken owners and they stepped aside. Then he glared at all the people who'd woken and witnessed the knife fight, and they got out of his way as well.

Monarch went to the ladder that led down into the hold. There were only two bare bulbs burning on the second level below deck, leaving the space dim and shadowed. When he reached the bottom of the ladder, he waited for his eyes to adjust, and then looked around, seeing many of the same people from earlier in the evening.

He found the two graduate assistants asleep in each other's arms, and nudged the boot of Edouard Les Cailles, Rousseau's aide. He didn't budge. Monarch kicked his foot. Les Cailles startled awake and shrank at Monarch's silhouette, waking Graciella Scuippa.

“What's going on, Edouard?” she mumbled, and then saw the thief.

“Did you see a guy climb out of here ten minutes ago?” Monarch asked.

“What?” Les Cailles asked. “
Non,
we were sleeping, why?”

“He just tried to stick a knife in me.”

They both sat up. “Where is he?”

“Swimming.”

They said nothing for several beats, confusion on their faces, until Carson's assistant asked in a wavering voice, “Do you think it was the same guy who killed Lourdes?”

“Why would you think that?”

Graciella shrugged uncomfortably and he thought he saw her eyes welling with tears before she said, “I have never known anyone murdered before Lourdes. And now a man tries to stab you, and you're with us, and I'm getting scared about this trip.”

Monarch couldn't argue with her logic. Someone was targeting members of the research team. But who? And why? And what had made the guy come after him like that, almost as an afterthought?

“Go on up on deck,” he said. “I'll stay here until we dock in Tefé.”

The graduate assistants appeared uncertain at first, but when they saw Monarch wasn't budging, they gathered their things, stuffed them into knapsacks, and left the hold.

No one else below deck had moved since the thief came down the ladder. He lay back on the cargo netting, thinking that he'd sleep better if he dug down into the gear and retrieved the dry bag that held the guns he'd bought in Rio.

They hadn't been difficult to find. He'd paid six thousand U.S. dollars for a Brazilian-made IMBEL paratrooper-style automatic rifle, two Taurus twelve-gauge, pistol-grip, pump-action combat shotguns, and a Beretta 9 mm pistol with one hundred rounds of ammunition for each weapon. He hadn't told Santos about his weapons stash, and wouldn't unless he decided they were all at risk.

Despite the earlier attack, that hadn't happened yet.

He closed his eyes, and drifted toward unconsciousness. The last thing he heard was the ferry hitting something in the river, a small rock or a tree limb that struck the hull and made a noise like a distant bell pealing.

The thief shut his eyes and his thoughts swung back to the bell at the front gate to the Hogar, and flashed on images from the days after most of the brothers had abandoned
la fraternidad,
and set out on a new path.

He relived how wonderful it had felt when Sister Rachel lifted the pack of rocks off his back and dumped them on the ground, and how grateful he'd been to her at that moment.

He was still grateful to her. Sister Rachel had given him, Claudio, and the others, a shot at a new life. The missionary doctor had shown him the road to redemption, or at least a way of balancing out his life by dedicating part of it to a cause beyond his own gain.