Neither of them could have known that her chance would come a week and a half later, when the CIA had alerted the Mossad about the Algiers meeting. Once the mission had been fast-tracked, David had worked around the clock to plan the car explosion and her escape. Her disappearance had been flawless, nobody had suspected a thing, and her putative death had gone off without a hitch.
She’d last seen David two days before leaving for Algiers. They’d had no contact since except for a blank postcard she’d sent to let him know she was safe, as they’d agreed.
The boat hit a particularly steep wave, and a shower of spray splashed high into the air, blowing over the sides of the hull and soaking them both. The memories were jarred away by the shock, and in spite of herself, she opened her eyes and laughed, water dripping from her hair and face.
Capitan Juan joined her, and she felt an ephemeral kinship with the old fisherman as they bounced over the swells, laughing mindlessly at having gotten wet.
The breeze and sunshine quickly dried her, and the moment passed. A pair of flying fish catapulted out of the water off the bow, keeping pace as they surfed the glistening spindrift that danced above the waves, to the steady accompanying throb of the boat’s motor.
After a few minutes, Juan pointed at a break in the jungle, where bleached buildings interrupted the seamless green of the shore on the horizon.
“Guiria.”
She nodded, shielding her eyes from the sunlight with her good hand.
“How long?” she asked.
He appeared to ponder the question seriously, brow furrowing before he gave her another toothless smile.
“Maybe fifteen minutes. We made good time.”
She nodded. “Sometimes life’s like that.”
They continued the rest of the journey in silence.
Chapter 8
Present Day, Guiria, Venezuela
If there was a grimmer place on the planet than Guiria’s harbor, Jet was yet to encounter it, and she’d languished in some low places in her time. Rusting fishing scows creaked and groaned against crumbling piers, bemoaning the region’s poverty. Once she had climbed up onto the wharf and waved goodbye to Capitan Juan, she turned to survey the little port, and what met her eyes wasn’t heartening. Corroded metal roofs, peeling paint and a pall of rotting stink greeted her senses as she moved from the waterfront into the town’s truculent streets.
She stopped at a small corner market and bought a bag of nuts and a bottle of water, which she drained greedily outside before going back in and getting another. Further up the block, she found a shop that stocked a few tank tops and T-shirts; she chose the least terrible of them, suffering the annoyed look from the old shopkeeper when she paid with dollars — a currency that was officially frowned upon in Venezuela, and yet in reality was accepted by the majority of the locals.
Near the central square, she came across a tired little hotel that had been around since the dawn of time. A few locals sat on the curb, trading familiar jokes and stories as they watched their world go by. They stopped talking as she passed them, and she could hear the whispered snipes when she walked through the hotel’s cracked wooden doors.
A stout woman, wearing a bright yellow dress and with the face of a former heavyweight contender, met her at the reception counter and agreed to rent her a room for seven dollars. Jet asked her about the bus schedule. She shrugged. The stop was two blocks up. Jet was free to check whenever she felt like it.
The room was on the second floor and smelled like a combination of vomit and mildew with a veneer of cleaning product slathered over it. But it would do — there was tepid running water and a bar of white soap in the shower, which was all she had been hoping for.
Half an hour later, she descended the stairs and stepped out into the muggy heat. The same loitering group watched her walk up the sidewalk in the direction of the bus stop, making all the same comments they’d made when she’d entered. Apparently, being a gutter rat in Guiria didn’t require a vast repertoire.
According to a faded agenda mounted on a post near the church, the bus to Caracas ran once a day in the early afternoon. It was scheduled to leave in an hour and a half, so she had time to eat and make it back to catch it.
A few minutes later, she was sitting in a family-style cafe that unsurprisingly featured seafood as its staple. She ordered the grilled fish and considered her next move as the dusty overhead fans creaked ineffective orbits to mitigate the heat.
Her adversaries either thought she was still alive and therefore likely still on Trinidad, or had heard about the exploding boat and thought she was dead. A very distant third possibility was that they remembered her last death by explosion and didn’t believe she’d really been killed, assuming they thought it was her on the boat.
It was the third possibility that troubled her.
If it were Jet conducting the hunt, she would have operatives at any of the major towns on the coast, watching, just in case. It was a long shot, but she’d gotten lucky herself on long shots before. Based on the scale of what she’d seen so far, she couldn’t discount the possibility.
When the fish arrived, Jet devoured it with ravenous enthusiasm, starved after a night with no supper.
Back on the street, she ambled down the shabby sidewalks until she found a stall calling itself Bazaar del Mundo — the bazaar of the world — a lofty claim based on the town and the sad collection of secondhand goods assembled within sight of the street. Washing machines from the Sixties, a TV that was older than she was, fishing nets at the end of their rope…and a rack of used clothing.
She entered the stifling emporium and browsed its sorry offerings, and within five minutes had made her selections, including an ancient cardboard suitcase that had probably been there since Columbus landed.
Once in the hotel, she changed into her new outfit — a shapeless, loose-fitting black skirt with a frayed hem, a creme-colored native blouse that looked like it hailed from the disco era, and a dark blue scarf for her head. The ensemble was completed with a pair of sandals that someone had probably died wearing. She peered at herself in the mirror, and a Venezuelan peasant woman looked back at her — only one whose face was still far too memorable. Her features were distinctive in the sense that she looked either Asian or Slavic — high cheekbones, slightly almond-shaped eyes, perfect symmetry. But that could easily pass for native — there was a decent amount of Indian blood in the population, which also had similar attributes.
She went into the bathroom and balled up some toilet paper and stuffed it between her cheeks and her bottom molars, then returned to consider her reflection. It was still missing something. Stooping down, she scraped up some dark brown filth from a corner of the room and then rubbed it beneath each eye. Much better. Now she looked at least ten years older, ridden hard by a harsh life. More in keeping with the likely passenger profile on a rural bus to nowhere.
Jet packed her clothes into the suitcase, along with her shoes, and snapped the latches closed. It wasn’t a perfect disguise, but anyone looking for her based on a description or her old passport photo wouldn’t give her a second glance.
On her way out of the hotel, she dropped the key on the counter, not waiting for the clerk to come out of the back and witness her remarkable transformation. She didn’t think that anyone would be questioning the unfriendly matron, but better to play it safe than take an unnecessary risk.