Thief (31 page)

“This is what?” Monarch yelled back.

“Where Kiki woke up the afternoon of her sixteenth birthday,” she shouted. “Just like Vovo. This is exactly as she described it, too.”

The monkeys finally started to calm down a few minutes later, enough for them all to stop covering their ears and drop their dry bags. Rousseau got down on his knees and bent his head to the water, drank right from the stream.

“You might regret that drink in a couple of days, professor,” Monarch said.

“Nonsense,” Carson said. “This is some of the cleanest water we've ever tested, Monarch. Try it.”

The thief hesitated. He had suffered through dysentery once and giardia twice. But seeing Santos and the assistants all cupping water and slurping it, he decided to take the risk.

To his surprise he found the water cool and refreshing, with a pleasant mineral aftertaste that left him thirsty for more.

“You think SJB is after whatever is in this water?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” Santos said. “How would they know about it?”

“One of us would have had to tell them, and that's ridiculous,” Rousseau said. “SJB would be the worst thing that could happen here. On that, we all agree.”

Monarch watched as the others nodded with conviction.

“They're bastards,” Les Cailles sniffed. “Care nothing for the environment.”

Graciella spit out her words. “There are people in Tefé who have been brain-damaged by the stuff that leaches out of their mines, and the government does nothing.”

“They must be paying a fortune in bribes,” Carson said, “because there are more SJB rigs here every time we come north.”

But what was the mining company after? Why try to kidnap Santos?

The thief drank until his belly was full, and then stepped into the shallow stream and walked around, feeling the water soothe his bite wounds. Even though they'd been walking for hours, he felt wide-awake, ready for another long hike if necessary.

Monarch climbed up on the bank, stripped the soggy bandages, let his legs dry, and then applied more antibiotic ointment to the bites, and wrapped them with clean bandages again. Light was fading. Carson and Rousseau built a fire, which drove away the surprisingly few mosquitos strong enough to fight the near-constant warm breeze out of the southwest.

“So we just wait?” Monarch asked.

Santos nodded. “We don't go to them. They come to us.”

Monarch ate dried meat and several power bars as night fell. He drank more of the excellent water, and rested on the ground with his back supported by the dry bag.

“Someone should bottle that water.”

Santos laughed. “That's what I said the first time I drank it.”

“See there?” Monarch said. “We think alike on some things.”

The scientist sobered and looked away. There had been friction between them since the morning after he'd left a smoking helicopter and a homicidal ex–Special Forces operator back on the river. When Monarch finally caught up to the scientists, he realized in a single glance that they had not brought the weapons.

When he'd asked why, they said they didn't feel comfortable exposing the primitive people to guns, or even the concept of guns. The thief had reacted angrily, telling them that he didn't feel very comfortable having to defend them with a single weapon.

Santos had gotten in his face after he described what happened. “People died?”

“Bad guys shot each other,” Monarch said. “I was really just an observer.”

“You provoked it.”

“No, they provoked it by planting tracking devices on us,” the thief replied. “Why would that mining company want to track us?”

“I have no idea,” Santos shot back.

The animosity had lingered between them for nearly three full days.

But after Monarch had said they thought alike, Santos smiled, and said, “Maybe there
are
some ways we think alike.”

“Breakthrough,” Monarch said, grinned, and looked away from her to study the fire. Lost in the flames, he decided he'd wait until the others were sleeping before calling on the sat phone.

Santos coughed. Seconds later, he looked over to see the scientist rocked back across her dry bag, mouth wide open, and glazed eyes staring at the sky.

Monarch felt the sting at the side of his neck as if a particularly nasty mosquito was at work. But before he could reach up to swat it, he lost all control over his arms, legs, and head, and felt seasick. His muscles turned to taffy; he slumped over, jaw sagging, eyes wide open.

The thief drifted off into a nebulous haze wondering if the painted men coming into the firelight with primitive spears extended before them were real or just featured players in a particularly vivid hallucination.

 

42

“GLAD TO SEE YOU'RE
finally awake,” John Tatupu said. “You've been out nearly three days.”

Tristan Hormel looked at him, and then the pitcher on the table by the bed. The Swiss banker said, “Water.”

Tatupu poured him some, put a straw in the cup, and fed the straw into his mouth. Hormel sucked on it, coughed, and sputtered.

“Easy there,” the big Samoan said. “Slow.”

Hormel took two more sips, wincing in pain before flopping back on the pillow.

“I need a doctor.”

“Other than the conk to the head, a few fractured ribs, and a right knee that's going to need some work, you're all right,” Tatupu said. “Miracle actually, given how fast you were going when you hit.”

“I hit…? Who are you?”

“See, that's the thing, Tristan. Depending on you, I can be your best friend, or your worst nightmare.”

The banker moaned, but said nothing.

“Tell me, why do you have armed men all around you and the attack dogs?”

Hormel's chin began to tremble before he said, “A very dangerous man, an assassin and a thief, has threatened to kill my wife and my family.”

“Yeah,” Tatupu said. “The thief's a friend of ours.”

“Oh, God,” the banker moaned. “Oh, God.”

“He can't help you, I'm afraid,” the big Samoan said. “Neither can your guards. And the GPS in your cell phone? It's on a train heading into Italy at the moment.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Depends on what you tell us.”

“What do you want?”

“Who hired you to hire the thief?”

Hormel looked nauseated and he shook his head ever so slightly.

“C'mon, now, Tristan,” the Samoan said. “You're doing what bankers always do: thinking about money, or in this case the shitload of money some third party paid you to hire the thief.”

The banker said nothing.

Tatupu sighed. When he had the choice he stayed away from violence and threats during interrogations, but he was getting nowhere being reasonable.

“You got a mom?” the Samoan asked.

“What?”

“Your mom. She alive?”

“Yes. But please, don't get her involved in—”

“Let me tell you about my mom,” Tatupu interrupted. “Greatest woman I've ever known. Raised six kids after my daddy died. Put five of my brothers and sisters through college, and saw me become a highly decorated member of the U.S. Special Forces.”

He paused to let that sink in, before continuing, “Great, great lady, going through a terrible thing, my mom. She's got early onset dementia. I went to see her a few weeks back in a nursing home. I'm her first born and she didn't even know my name.”

It was true, and the Samoan had to work to keep his emotions in check.

After several moments of silence, Hormel said, “I'm sorry. I really am. But what does this have to—”

“Do with you?” Tatupu said. “See, here's the thing. You love your mother and your family. I get it. I love my mother and my family, too. And the thief? He most definitely loves his mother and his family.

“Now the thief is a very dear friend of mine, and so is his mother, who does a great deal of good in this world,” he went on, pausing for effect before finally allowing his voice to betray anger. “We brought you here because we wanted you to know what a terrible mistake you've made having her kidnapped.”

“I had nothing to do with—” Hormel began, before screaming in pain when Tatupu whacked a soupspoon against his kneecap.

When the screaming died, Tatupu said, “I figure your patella's broken there. What do you think? Should we try again? Make sure?”

“No, please,” the banker begged, tears rolling. “Are you savages?”

“Hey, now,” Tatupu said, going back to that agreeable voice. “You're involved in the kidnapping of a woman who's given her life to the poor, and the abandoned, and now you're calling
me
a savage?”

He snapped the spoon against the busted patella again. Hormel screeched and writhed.

“No more,” he pleaded. “No more.”

Tatupu dropped the spoon on a dresser to his left, and then said, “Give me a simple answer. Who hired you to hire the thief?”

Hormel began to sob. “You don't know these people. They're more dangerous than any thief, and—”

“Sorry to interrupt, but for your information, we have the badass factor in our favor,” the Samoan said. “We could have just as easily attacked your home with machine guns and rocket grenades. But we were trying to keep your family out of it. If you don't answer me right now, however, I'm sending men to take your mother. Your wife will be next. Talk to us or we'll leave your kids orphans.”

“No!” Hormel cried. “Please, I'll tell you. I'll tell you! His name is Esteban Reynard. He's an attorney in Buenos Aires. He works for the drug cartels.”

 

43

MONARCH ROUSED TO THE
cooing of doves. His head pounded, and his stomach was sour. He had no idea where he was when he first came to, only that he was lying on his right side on something hard and flat and that the air seemed a perfect temperature, and that he was as hungover as he'd been in his entire life.

The thief cringed at the sound of an ax striking wood at some distance, and then relaxed at the laughter of children. He felt beneath him. He was lying on woven mats.

Confused, he started to roll over, only to set off a new round of clanging in his head. It was several minutes before he could force his eyes open, and see that he was in a long, triangular-shaped structure. Rough-thatch walls rose steeply, supported by lengths of bamboo lashed to a thicker bamboo center beam to form an A-frame.

Monarch's memory started to return. He remembered being in Brazil, in the jungle, with Santos and the scientists, but had no sense of where he was now and how he'd gotten here. The thief tried to sit up, but a round of pounding and dizziness pushed him back to the floor with his eyes tightly shut.

The second time Monarch opened his eyes, he kept his head resting on the mats, and tilted it left and right, looking to see if he was alone. To his sides and beyond his feet, there were nothing but those reed mats covering the floor a good thirty feet or more to a triangular opening, and sunlight and trees beyond.

The thief heard a creak somewhere behind him and felt the floor shift. He rolled over slowly onto his stomach, and lifted his head, startled, and then gazed in disbelief at the apparition a few feet away.

Stone-faced and unblinking, the young man sat on his haunches, elbows and arms between his knees, hands clutching a primitive spear. A short skirt of coarse brown fabric clung to his narrow waist. His flesh was dark copper and loosely splotched with green and tan paint. About his eyes, like a mask, his skin had been dyed a deep red. His glistening ebony hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and two purple bird feathers had been tucked in near his temples. White teardrops were stenciled down his cheeks. Monarch guessed he was roughly eighteen.

Monarch's head started to throb horribly again, and he hung it, and groaned.

To his surprise, the Indian started laughing.

Despite the clanging in his skull, Monarch looked up to see the young man grinning now. He pointed at the thief, and then back to his own head before he started hitting the heel of his palm against his skull, laughing, and then jabbering in a language that sounded very much like the one Santos and Kiki shared.

“I get the feeling you've been in my state before,” Monarch said back to him in English, before remembering the sting in his neck at the fire.

Obviously a dart of some kind, probably from a blowgun, but what the hell had the dart been dipped in? Monarch knew a thing or two about the drugs that could incapacitate a man. He'd used several of them over the years. Most took a minute or two to fully take effect. But he remembered going down less than five seconds after the sting. What the hell was that stuff?

The Indian handed him a carved bowl filled with water. Monarch accepted it gratefully. He took a sip, realized it had the same excellent taste as the water in the stream, and drank down the entire bowl, and two more. Then the young man held up fresh green leaves and gestured to Monarch to take and eat them.

When in Rome, the thief thought, and put them in his mouth, noticing a slight stinging on his tongue, and then as he chewed it, a clear taste, almost like fresh celery.

To his surprise, the nausea almost immediately began to subside, as did the general misery in his head. Soon after drinking the water, and swallowing the leaves, he could sit up. Soon after that, the Indian pointed at his chest, said what sounded like “Getok” and then pointed to Monarch with his red eyebrow arched.

“Robin,” Monarch said. “Getok?”

The young man smiled, made an
ayy
noise and patted his chest. “Getok. Rawwbin?”

“Robin,” Monarch said, and smiled back.

Outside, a rhythmic thumping noise began. Getok gestured with his spear toward the triangular opening at the far end of what Monarch had taken to calling the long house. The thief nodded, and started to get unsteadily to his feet before realizing there was some kind of paste smeared over his bites, and they no longer hurt.