A knock on the door broke the silence. “Visitors?” I asked, confused.
“Let me check.” She rose quickly and went straight to her room. In seconds she was back with gun in hand. It was the first time I’d seen her react so defensively, a sure sign that I wasn’t the only one feeling the tension.
Standing to the side of the door, she asked in Spanish, “Who is it?”
“Father Balto.”
It sounded like his voice, and he was the only person to whom Alex had given our address. She opened the door cautiously, leaving it chained.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes. May I come in, please?”
She peered into the hallway through the opening, then removed the chain and let him in.
His black raincoat was wet with the early-evening drizzle. Alex took it and left it on the hall tree with his umbrella. He greeted me kindly as we gathered at the kitchen counter.
“I have a message from Joaquin,” he said.
I caught my breath. “Good or bad news?”
“Good, I believe. He will take the deal.”
“Seriously?”
“One point five million, simultaneous exchange. On one condition,” he said, raising a finger to make his point. “The son delivers the ransom.”
“No,” said Alex.
“How can we say no?”
“I don’t like it,” she said. “I would have expected him to make us wait, sweat a few days. That was too fast on the turnaround. Makes me nervous.”
“That’s Joaquin,” said the priest. “I said it before. He’s very volatile.”
“Which means that we can’t keep pushing his buttons,” I said. “He’s cut the ransom in half. He’s giving us a simultaneous exchange. We have to give him something.”
“That doesn’t mean we should give him you,” said Alex.
“He said this is his final offer,” said the priest.
“Kidnappers always say that.”
“Maybe this time he means it,” I said.
She hesitated. I could see in her eyes that she didn’t want to go out on that limb, telling me that Joaquin didn’t mean it, only to have my father’s death on her own hands.
“If you go,” she said, “I’m going with you.”
“How about it, Father?” I asked.
He shrugged, struggling. “Technically, he didn’t say you had to come alone. He just wants the son to deliver the ransom.”
“Then it’s settled.”
Father Balto placed his cell phone on the counter. “Joaquin asked that I give you this. From here on out, your instructions will be by cell phone.”
Alex reached for it, but the priest stopped her. “You can join in the delivery of the ransom, but I think he’s expecting to speak directly with the son.”
She stepped back warily. “I don’t like this, Nick.”
“Nobody does, least of all my father.” I took the phone and tucked it into my pocket. “But none of us has a choice.”
Father Balto and I shared his umbrella on the short walk down the street to the drugstore. I had no conception of the traceability of long-distance calls from Bogota to Miami, but I didn’t want to learn the hard way. The last thing I needed was to lead the FBI’s legal attaches to the apartment. I closed myself in a phone booth in the back of the drugstore and dialed Jenna. I wanted to tell her what had been happening, but she seemed more eager to tell me something.
“I found you a lawyer. A sharp former prosecutor named Jerry Houlihan.”
“I’ve heard good things about him.”
“I was hoping you’d approve. Your mom and I authorized him to start working right away. The police executed a search warrant on your Jeep today.”
“They what?”
“They found your father’s gun under the front seat.”
I could have clubbed myself with the phone. “Damn. I put it there when the police got to Jaime’s house and ended up going straight to the airport from the police station. Couldn’t very well take it on the plane with me.”
“Nick?”
“What?”
“Why did you take a gun with you to Jaime’s house?”
“Because he invited me there, and I didn’t know what to expect. Hell, the last time I went there, he pulled a knife on me. You know all about that.”
“I don’t know as much as you think. You and Jerry have to talk soon. He keeps asking me questions that I can’t answer.”
“I’ll try to call him tomorrow.”
“Try hard, please. I don’t mean to downplay the kidnapping, but this is serious. They could charge you with murder.”
“Don’t get discouraged, all right? And tell my mom not to worry either. We’ll straighten the whole thing out when I get home. Could be soon.”
“Is something about to happen with your father?”
“Definitely.”
“You think it could finally be over?”
“One way or the other, yes. It could be over.”
She paused, as if she didn’t like the sound of that. “Be careful, okay?”
“I will.”
“This is really scaring me.”
“Me, too,” I said, my voice fading.
The call came at midnight, the distinctive chirping of a cell phone on the end table. I nearly jackknifed in response, launching my tired body from a comfortable slumber on the couch. Alex came running from the bedroom. I flipped open the receiver, swallowed the lump in my throat, and answered.
“Hola.”
He didn’t answer right away, but I recognized the voice as soon as he began. “We’ll do this in English, but I’ll only say it once. So listen good. Understand?”
Alex sat right beside me on the couch, her ear close enough to listen.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Five-thirty tomorrow evening. Be at Cementerio Central.”
“The cemetery?”
“Don’t interrupt! Go to the grave of Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada. Bring the money and the cell phone. Wait in front of the monument. I’ll call you. Don’t be late.”
“Wait, what grave?”
“I told you I’d say it once.” The line clicked.
“Damn it! What grave!” I clutched the phone tightly, shaking it in frustration.
“Don’t worry, I got it,” said Alex.
“You sure?”
“It’s probably the largest monument in the cemetery. He’s the founder of Bogota.”
“Why would Joaquin send us there?”
“A quiet, isolated spot in the middle of a city of eight million people. If something goes wrong, he has hundreds of escape routes down surrounding side streets in every direction.”
“He could have sent us to the park.”
“He could have. But that wouldn’t have set your mind to thinking the way a cemetery does, would it?”
“No,” I said, trying to keep my mind from going there. “Definitely not.”
72
We reached the cemetery right on schedule, just a few minutes before 5:30 P.M. Our arrival was timed perfectly. We didn’t want to be standing around any longer than necessary with one and a half million dollars in a knapsack, even if we were both armed.
Alex had insisted that I carry a gun, which made good sense to me. It had taken her only a small portion of that Monday to scrounge up an Austrian-made Glock nine-millimeter pistol.
“This will stop a charging rhinoceros in its tracks,” she’d said, placing the gun in my hand. “Use it only if you intend to kill someone.”
Her warning had unleashed weeks of pent-up emotions that suddenly bubbled forth to form a conscious thought that chilled me. I’d never laid eyes on this Joaquin, but for all he’d done to my father, my mother, my family, I did indeed want him dead. Trading in human lives had to be the most despicable crime on earth.
The afternoon was overcast, the sun completely hidden. Less than a half hour of daylight remained. Trees stood leafless against a sad, gray November sky. There was a slight chill in the damp air, no breeze to stir it. Bogota’s notorious smog, the by-product of more than a million vehicles, hovered over the graves like the stench of death itself. The cemetery grounds covered a vast rectangular expanse, surrounded by a city that had grown around it. Many of the magnificent stone memorials were centuries old, discolored and decaying from the elements, the pollution, the vandals. Blaring horns and other rumblings of urban life could be heard in the distance, not loud enough to be disruptive, but enough to make me wonder if anyone here truly rested in peace.