The nymph swirled slightly and then a flash from the deep pool snatched the fly and immediately learned its mistake and the tension from the line halted its progress. Jake raised the rod tip and set the hook. The fight was on.
“That’s a nice one, Jake,” his Argentine guide proclaimed from just ten feet away. The two of them were wading in the frigid water, Paulo a bit disinterested, with his cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth. The first few days had been a feeling out period, where Paulo tried to determine Jake’s skill level. Once he realized that Jake could handle the river, the rod, and the fish he caught without help, Paulo had become more of an observer than a guide — his only job to put Jake onto the best sections of river at the right time of day.
The fish was losing its fight in a hurry, despite its ten-pound heft, so Jake eased it near his legs and with a simple flick of his wrist, released the fish back into the cold depths of the river.
By now Paulo was just a few feet from Jake. “The sun will be down soon, my friend. Are you ready to call it a day?”
Jake looked to the west and figured he had a quarter kilometer more of river to explore. But he still had a few more days before he was scheduled to leave this area. “Yeah, I guess so. What’s on the menu tonight?”
Paulo smiled, his imperfect teeth, stained by the filterless cigarettes, tightening down on the last of a butt. “Julia has been cooking a roast from that stag you shot last week.”
Jake had taken a red stag and given all the meat to his hunting guide in southern Patagonia, with the exception of the back straps, tenderloins and a nice roast, which he had given to Paulo and his wife to cook during his week on the Chimehuin River. Julia had cooked excellent medallions of tenderloin the first night Jake arrived.
“Well, then we better get going,” Jake said. “Hate to let that roast dry out.”
As they got to the Ford SUV up the hill, Jake broke down his fly rod and then sat onto the back of the open vehicle and removed his full-length waders. That’s when he first heard the vehicle approach from the east on the gravel road.
Paulo lit a cigarette from the small butt and stamped out the old one in the dirt as he took a long drag on the new one, bringing the tip to a bright orange.
Jake noticed a puzzled look on the guide’s weathered face. “Are you expecting someone, Paulo?”
He shifted his head side to side and then blew smoke away from his eyes.
Instinctively, Jake reached for his gun, which wasn’t in its normal spot under his left arm. He had left all of his handguns in storage in various locations, and only had his hunting rifle back at the lodge. He felt naked without them. His only weapons were his hands, feet and the filet knife strapped to his belt on his left hip.
Once the old beat-up car got closer, the plume of smoke from its wake rising up twenty feet in the air, Jake could see that it was a taxi. Based on the dents and the smoke coming from the engine, the taxi driver needed to do a better job of taking care of his carriage. The car stopped some twenty feet away, but the dust kept coming, and Jake did his best to swish it away with his hands. The driver stayed behind the wheel and a younger man in a wrinkled black suit got out in a hurry, an old scratched-up brown leather briefcase in his right hand. The man was tall and slim with a two-day-old beard and black hair that could have just come from the shower, but was probably styled and gelled to look that way. Jake would be surprised if he’d reached his third decade.
“Mister Jake Adams?” the man asked, his voice nearly cracking when he spoke. He cleared his throat to help with what he had to say next.
Jake looked at his guide and then back at the man. “No habla Englese.”
The young man’s eyes shifted to the guide and then back to Jake. Then he cleared his throat again. “I’ve seen your picture, sir.”
Jake shook his head and walked up to the young man. With one swift movement he shoved his left thumb into the man’s sternum and extracted an automatic handgun from inside the man’s jacket and pointed it at his face. But the young man, bent over slightly, was too busy trying to catch his breath from the blow to care about the gun in his face.
Backing up a couple of steps, Jake said, “You can tell your friends in Buenos Aires that I’m retired.” He noticed the taxi driver was getting nervous, and so was his guide, Paulo.
The young man protested with his left hand while his right tried to rub life into his sternum. “Sir, I work for the American Embassy.”
“I know who you work for,” Jake said.
“My name is Devan Stormont,” the man said, and then shifted the briefcase from his right to left hand to extend his hand to be shaken.
Jake lowered the gun, dropped the magazine to the dirt and extracted the 9mm round from the chamber. Leaving the slide back, he handed the gun back to the man. He turned to his guide and said, “Give us a minute, Paulo.”
The guide nodded and shuffled toward the driver’s seat of the SUV.
“Now,” Jake started, “what does the CIA want with me?”
“You misunderstand, sir,” Devan said. “I’m with the State Department.”
“Well then they’re not paying you enough,” Jake said. When the man looked confused, Jake continued, “Your suit is off the rack, probably Nordstrom’s Rack. You come here in a crappy cab that you’re lucky did not spontaneously explode on the way here. Your briefcase is older than you. You’re carrying a Beretta M9, standard government issue, which you probably checked out from the marine detail at the Buenos Aires Embassy. And your tactics suck. If you think you might need to carry a gun, then you sure as hell better know how to use it. Based on your carrying your gun under your left arm pointed backwards, you’re clearly right handed with a cross draw. You should have gotten out of the cab with the briefcase in your left hand, leaving your right hand free to draw your weapon. Also, you should have released the safety before getting out of the car.”
The young man look deflated, as if he had been asking girls to dance all night and gotten none to do so.
“All right,” Jake said. “What do you want? I have a stag roast that will be starting to dry out really soon.”
The embassy man lifted the briefcase as if to get approval to open it. When Jake didn’t protest, the man clicked it open, removed a sealed envelope, and closed the briefcase again. He handed the envelope to Jake, who shook his head and reluctantly accepted it. Jake knew a diplomatic pouch when he saw one. It was waterproof, sealed and signed, and he would have to sign a chain of custody indicating he had gotten it. What was inside would be likely Top Secret. He really didn’t want to know what was inside. That life was behind him.
The envelope was on the light side. He could only guess what was inside.
“You are to open the envelope in my presence,” the state department man said sheepishly.
Jake shook his head and swiftly drew his filet knife, then slid it across the seal. He pulled out a single piece of paper, a letter topped off with the official seal of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was being summoned to testify before the House Subcommittee on Intelligence — an oxymoron if he ever heard one. This wouldn’t be his first dog and pony show. During his years with the CIA, he’d testified a few times before senate and house sub-committees. All of them were highly classified behind closed doors with only a limited number of members present to protect his identity. In fact, they had never used his real name and he had used a disguise. But this time would be different. They used his real name and, from what Jake could tell, this would be in front of cameras. Somebody wanted to make a show of this. Members of congress flocked to cameras like moths to a street light.