Thief (36 page)

“I'll take your advice,” he said, returned to his hut, not figuring to sleep at all.

*   *   *

He was surprised when someone shook his foot, and he awoke groggily to see Santos grinning at him.

“C'mon,” she said. “You don't want to miss your first full moon among the Ayafal.”

Monarch glanced at the flash drive dangling around her neck, but then nodded and sat up, seeing that it was late afternoon. The canyon was already falling into shadows, and the voices of the tribe were fading into the jungle. He followed Santos down the ladder and found the settlement empty except for fifteen or twenty children who all looked like they'd lost their puppies.

“No kids at the party?”

She laughed. “It would be, uh, inappropriate.”

“Okay,” the thief said. “Now you've intrigued me.”

Santos made a zipping motion across her mouth.

“Right, Carson told me I have to experience it myself.”

The lead scientist's eyes looked like they were laughing as she nodded.

“Lead on.”

They took the now familiar route through the jungle to the clearing. He tried to get Santos to talk about her discovery, but she seemed amused to stay mute and study his apprehension.

They emerged into the clearing near the waterfall where the party was clearly under way. The moment Naspec saw Monarch, he rushed toward him carrying one of the gourds. The chief beamed, smiled, and said something.

“He's offering you the wine of the moon god,” Santos whispered. “It's a drink they make from jungle berries. I highly recommend it.”

Monarch nodded. Someone produced a carved wooden ladle of sorts. Naspec lifted the lid on the gourd and plunged it in, coming up with a deep, dark, red liquid that carried an aroma similar to brandy. The thief sipped a bit and felt it explode with differing tastes, all pleasant, a little nutty, a little fruity, and a major zing at the end. He drank the ladleful, and another without argument.

When the chief offered him a third, the thief looked at Santos, said, “They trying to get me hammered?”

“They're getting you in the mood.”

“You're not getting in the mood?” he asked.

“After the show, thank you,” Santos said with a smile.

The canyon was taking on shadows as the sun dropped in the west. Within minutes, Monarch was hyperaware of how the light in the clearing was changing, and he had a warm sense of well-being growing at the back of his head. He smiled at Santos.

“Feeling it?” the scientist asked.

“Uh, yeah,” he replied, watching with fascination as the Ayafal started to segregate, with the men moving closer to the waterfall behind a pile of tree limbs arranged for a bonfire.

The Ayafal women were gathering in front of the pile. They and the other scientists seem to be entertained as they watched Monarch. The thief didn't care. He was focused on the Ayafal men, at least forty of them, who started pounding the ground with the butts of their spears and chanting in deep, sonorous, and harmonized tones that put Monarch in mind of recordings he'd heard of whales singing.

“They're bidding farewell to the sun,” Santos whispered as the clearing was cast in darker and darker shadows.

When the chanting was done, the clearing and the jungle around it fell into a deep, almost funereal silence. Down in the canyon it was near pitch-black now, but high overhead the sky had gone from the softest orange to stars that showed through a glimmer of dull aluminum light.

Then Monarch saw a glowing ember moving toward him in the darkness. The ember brightened as if blown by a bellows, and he smelled a pungent smoke different from marijuana's, lighter he thought, and sweeter. The ember came right up to him and he saw in its glow that it burned in the bowl of a pipe exactly like the ones he'd seen back in Rio in the offices of Santos, Rousseau, and Carson.

“If you want the full effect, you need to smoke it,” Santos said. “Then that pipe will be yours forever.”

“I'm not going to flip out, am I?”

“I thought it was one of the most tremendous experiences of my life, but if you want it you need to hurry up.”

Against his better judgment, Monarch took the pipe from the chief and did as Santos instructed, taking three deep draws, tasting the smoke and finding it fungal on the way in, and vinegary on the way out.

At first the thief felt nothing more than very, very relaxed, his mind slowing, his thoughts not racing at all. Then the quiet seemed to filter out into his veins and through his body and he swore he might drift away on the sensation.

Clapping in unison, the Ayafal women began to sing their own chant at a slightly higher tempo than the men's.

“They're welcoming the moon god,” Santos whispered. “That's her gathering strength in the sky above the waterfall. She's come to talk to you, Robin.”

The thief found the sound of the waterfall in the darkness, looked toward it and up, seeing that the dull aluminum light was building and sharpening with every breath he took. His heart seemed to beat with the tempo of the women's chanting, which gathered pace and built speed, getting louder and more raucous by the moment.

Monarch felt mesmerized when the top of the moon appeared above the trees on the cliff. The men started chanting again, but in a higher octave and steadier beat. The thief could see the tribe now in the strengthening moonlight, and how the men had divided into two groups that retreated to opposite sides of the pool.

More of the moon showed above the notch. Its light found the uppermost part of the waterfall, turned it as shimmering as mercury. As the moon rose higher, in and then over the cliff notch, the waterfall continued to transform, inching down the cliff, glistening like molten silver and pewter.

The thief had no sense of how long it took. He felt untethered in time, and totally entranced by the waterfall appearing out of the darkness in those stunning colors until finally the moon had risen high enough to light the entire cascade top to bottom and to fill the pool side to side.

Monarch gasped and felt his eyes well. He had never seen anything quite that beautiful in his entire life.

The men and women stopped singing. For a beat the thief knew only the waterfall, the pool, and the beating of his own heart.

Then a lone, rich, and wavering female voice began to sing, and Monarch saw the shape of a woman appear inside the waterfall, right where it met the pool. She stepped out from within the falling water with her hands outstretched and her face tilted up to the moon. In his stupor the thief realized it was Fal-até, the old shaman woman, who was singing so wonderfully.

“She's the moon god's sister,” Santos whispered. “It's what her name means in Ayafal.”

The other women and the men picked up her song, and the collective, harmonic sound seemed to penetrate the thief's flesh, pulse inside him, and, echo and beat until spots appeared before his eyes, transforming the shaman woman into Sister Rachel.

Seeing the missionary bent back like that, her arms supplicated, pleading with the sky for mercy, an uncontrollable ball of emotion welled in Monarch's stomach and pushed up his throat. He began to weep and to sob, and felt himself go to the ground.

“Monarch?” Santos said, sounding far, far away. “It's okay. Just talk to her. Tell her the truth when she asks.”

Monarch tried to close his eyes to erase the image of Sister Rachel suffering, but then a flame appeared in front of the pool and the waterfall. It built, threw light, and revealed one of the men on his knees coaxing an ember to ignite more dry grass, and the twigs, and cut branches. As the bonfire gathered fury, Monarch hallucinated Sister Rachel in the pool, consumed now in water and fire.

A silhouette appeared, blocking the flames and the waterfall. The silhouette started to speak. But the voice was distorted, the frequency of it rising and falling so he had no idea whether the person before him was male or female, friend or foe.

He felt himself rolled on his back. He gaped up at the full moon.

Monarch tried to talk to the moon god, pleading. He knew his jaw and tongue were moving, but heard no sound.

The drugs hit him like a crashing wave then, beat on him, stripped his mind of all thought, and bore him off into a cascade of color that rapidly accelerated toward darkness.

 

49

BUENOS AIRES

GLORIA BARNETT LOOKED UP
from her laptop, her face grave.

“What is it?” Claudio asked.

The painter and Monarch's team were in a passenger van Barnett had rented, and Abbott Fowler had parked in a seedy neighborhood on the outskirts of the city.

“SJB,” Barnett said. “The mining company that put the GPS trackers on the rafts. According to an analyst I know at the CIA, they're bad, bad news. The owner, Silvio Juan Barbosa, has half the Brazilian government in his pocket and seems to act with impunity up in the Amazon basin. People who complain about his mines or practices have a habit of turning up dead, or not turning up at all.”

“Robin took their helicopter down,” Tatupu said. “They're not in the picture.”

“Barbosa doesn't give up easily. Robin should know his men remain a threat.”

“Message him,” Chavez said, and then gestured to Claudio. “Ready?”

Claudio glanced at his watch. It was past ten. He nodded.

“Break a leg,” Barnett said.

“See you soon,” Tatupu said, and pumped fists with Claudio.

He and Chavez climbed out, rounded the corner, and crossed the street toward the gaudy neon lights of Club Boom-Boom. A sign out front proclaimed that porn star Leonora Bunda was making a special appearance.

Looking at the packed parking lot and the small groups of men streaming toward the entrance, Chavez shook her head, said, “I never get the attraction of places like this and women like Leonora Bunda.”

Claudio shrugged. “It's a guy thing. We're hardwired to want to look.”

“You're not looking in there,” she said. “Right?”

The artist crossed arms, palms on his shoulders, and crooned in heavily accented English: “I only have eyes for you … and your bunda—”

Chavez chortled, said, “You better, you know what's good for you.”

“Alonzo Miguel was right, you are scary at times.”

That seemed to make her happy as they went through the doors into a dimly lit lobby where they brought up the rear of a line. Dance music pulsated beyond a set of heavy black drapes. When they reached the front, the cashier gave Chavez the once over.

The sniper hugged Claudio, said sweetly, “We like the same things.”

The cashier shrugged, took their money, and nodded toward the drapes. As they went through, Claudio said, “That was creative.”

“I have my moments,” Chavez said.

“Kind of turned me on, too.”

“Down boy. Focus on what we're here for.”

Claudio scanned the interior, which featured two stages: one long, narrow, and surrounded by men drinking in chairs, and a square one with a pole surrounded by VIP boxes set back against the wall. It took him less than a minute to spot the man he'd hoped he'd find.

“Got to hand it to Robin,” he said. “He was dead on about Jesus Rincon. And Rincon was dead on about Tito.”

“You mean he's in here?”

“He is.”

Claudio reached up and flipped the switch on the tiny radio transceiver in his ear. Chavez did the same, said, “We've got a target.”

“Position?” Barnett said.

“Back of the main stage, middle VIP booth,” Claudio said. “He's at the rear of the booth and has company. Three women. And there are two goons out front.”

“Give me a visual?”

The artist reached into his pocket, took out a pair of Google glasses modified to look like black, thick hipster frames with oversized silver hinges to conceal the camera. He touched a small button, said, “How's that?”

“Light's low, but it will do,” Barnett said.

“Good,” Chavez said. “Let's get this party started.”

Claudio led the way across the room, around the back of the main stage where a blonde with fake boobs was warming up the crowd and the DJ was rambling on about “the legendary exploits of Leonora Bunda.”

Claudio went straight to the goons with his hands up, said, “I'm an old friend, and unarmed.”

“Fuck off,” one said. “He's busy.”

“Hey, Tito,” Claudio said, showing him the tattoo. “It's me.”

Inside the VIP area, three women in bikinis were mauling Tito Gonzalez, and for a second he didn't even look Claudio's way. But then the gangster came up for air. He stared quizzically at him, then at Chavez.

Tito had gained weight, gotten puffy, but he was still the rat-face Claudio remembered from twenty years before, with a long nose and narrow chin, and a gap between his yellow upper two teeth. But the eyes, which he recalled as almost black and cunning in their youth, were different now. They were glassy and bloodshot courtesy of the Peruvian pink flake cocaine laid out in thin horseshoe lines on the mirror table.

“Claudio Fortunato,” Tito said as if every syllable were rancid.

“Long time.”

“Too short,” Tito said acidly. “So fuck off. I don't hang with traitors, even two decades after the fact.”

“We're not looking to hang,” said Chavez. “We just want to ask some questions.”

Tito shoved one of the girls off his lap, gave the sniper the psycho stare, and said, “Who the fuck are you, bitch?”

Claudio said, “Have some fucking respect, Tito. That's the woman I love.”

“Yeah? Or what?” Tito asked. “Artist and his bitch gonna go gangster?”

“We can do better than that,” Chavez said, taking a step to the side.

Claudio said, “The big Samoan sitting with his back to the stage looking at you? He's a CIA assassin. Any of you makes a move on us, he kills you all.”