To Become Master, Pose as a Servant.
Free Erin!
Life Is a Sexually Transmitted Disease.
He didn’t open the door immediately when I knocked. There was a blanket covering the house’s main window. The blanket moved, and I saw a nose press against the glass. A few moments later, the door cracked opened an inch or two.
The Irish accent was unmistakable, even though he spoke in Spanish: “Who are you? Why are you here?”
Paranoia isn’t paranoia if someone is really after you. This guy’s voice had the sound of genuine fear.
I replied in English, “I need to use a phone. It’s very important. I’ll pay you, no problem.”
The door cracked slightly wider, and I could see a wedge of his red Irish skin, and one dark eye. “Tell me who you are, what you’re doing here. There’re no gringos in this village. They don’t belong.”
I almost asked, Then what are you doing here?
Instead, I took refuge in an old, familiar lie. I explained to him that I was a marine biologist, here to do research on the rare Amazonian dolphin but that my boat had been stolen. Because I had friends in the village of Remanso, waiting on me, I had to contact them immediately.
I added, “If you drive me there, I’ll pay you whatever you want. A couple hundred dollars? Three hundred? In American money. It’s that important. Or let me use your phone. Please.”
He looked at me, then looked at the heavy, plastic briefcase. “What’a you got in there?”
“Cameras, research equipment. A waterproof case is the only way to protect the stuff.”
He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Wait here. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
When he closed the door, I heard him lock it behind him.
I looked at Keesha. “You said there was an evil man in this village. Is that him?”
“No. He’s a drunk. Could you not smell him? The evil man lives on top of the mountain. Up there.”
I followed her gaze to the west. High above us, several miles away, atop the rain-scarred hillside, was what looked to be a clustering of big houses.
“He lives there,” she said. “I have heard stories that people go into that house and never return. He’s the one my people call the Bad Gift. He’s an American-like you.”
The Irishman came out carrying a beat-up Nokia cell telephone. “It’s all charged up, but you can’t get a signal here,” he said. “I’ll have to drive you to the top of the hill. Until we got all that goddamn jungle cut down, you couldn’t even get a signal up there.” He paused. “It’s gonna cost you a hundred bucks, Yank. In advance.”
As I paid him, Keesha said to me, “He’s not going to take us to the big house on the hill? We must not let him take us there.”
I looked at the Irishman, to see if he understood the question. He replied, “Take you to Tyner’s place? You don’t go looking for Curtis Tyner. He comes looking for you.”
“He’s an American?” I asked.
The Irishman replied, “He used to be. I’m not sure if he even knows anymore. Or cares.”
When we were loaded in the pickup truck, Keesha between us, the Irishman lighted a cigarette, and told us his name was Niall, no surname offered. It reinforced the impression that he was afraid of something, on the run.
“How long have you lived here, Niall?”
“Too fucking long. This place is hell when it comes to civilized things, things we take for granted back in the world. Women, though. ..” He swung his chin toward Keesha. “You can have all the girls you want, and as young as you want.” As if she were not there, he added, “And a lot more comely than this one. She looks a little used up. The jungle girls. They don’t flower for long. Give me another ten bucks, I’ll find you two girls a hell of a lot prettier than this one.”
We drove the rest of the way up the mountainside in silence, the back of the truck fishtailing on the slick orange clay. Once, the Irishman came very close to losing control completely, and we nearly slid over an embankment that would have dropped us several hundred feet into a gully.
The girl had reached for me involuntarily, her small hands tight on my arm, yet the stoic expression on her face did not change. Even when she said, “It is not so interesting as I thought it might be.”
“What’s that?” I asked her.
“Riding in an automobile. I thought it would be as interesting as paddling my obada. But it is not. It gives my stomach a sick feeling. Do people ever recover from this sickness?”
Thus I knew it was her first time in a car.
Several hundred feet above the village, near a ditch already overgrown with scrub bush and weeds, the Irishman braked to a stop. He handed the phone to me, and said, “Step out of the truck, you may have to move around a wee bit. But you should get a signal.”
I walked away from the truck, taking a slip of paper from my billfold on which I’d written Harrington’s number and a couple of others. The paper was sticky wet from being dumped in the river, though still readable.
But I never got a chance to finish dialing. As I straightened my glasses and began touching buttons on the phone, a half-dozen Latin-looking men, heavily armed and dressed in camo, stepped out of the bushes.
I stood there motionless, with no way to respond. I’d taken off my holster prior to entering the village, and I’d left the briefcase in the truck.
In Spanish, one of the guerrillas yelled, “If you move or try to run, we will kill you both!”
To my left, I heard the door of the Toyota slam shut, and I looked to see the Irishman drag Keesha out onto the ground as, in the far distance, a green Humvee sped toward us, kicking up a rooster tail of mud.
As I raised my hands above my head, I said to Niall, “You have me, there’s no reason to hurt her.”
In reply, the Irishman said to the guerrillas, “Search him while I see what the bastard’s got in this case. Sergeant Tyner is on his way.”
28
I’m not certain what I expected to see when the door of the Humvee opened, but it was not the astonishing figure that now approached me. Curtis Tyner-for it could have been no one else-was only slightly over five feet tall, and he had fire-bright red hair and bristling orange muttonchops of a type that I associate with Scottish bagpipers from a previous century. The hair of his beard was combed out away from his cheeks so that his face would have been orangutan-like in size and form but for the huge, waxed handlebar mustache that swept up toward his blue eyes.
Belted around his waist was a semiautomatic pistol and an attack/survival knife in a leather scabbard. His tiger-striped camouflage tactical dress-pants the same as mine-were bloused perfectly into his jungle boots. He wore a black beret cocked low over his right eye, and carried a leather swagger stick, which he used to slap the palm of his left hand as he approached. The T-shirt he wore was dark blue with a bright-yellow inner layer. Golden letters over the left breast read: British Royal Marines
Special Boat Service
M Squadron
Pinned on to the beret, I noticed, were a golden death’s head, along with a dagger and wreath that may have been from the South African Special Forces Brigade. There was also a patch that read: 1st SFOD-Delta Force.
An eclectic and unlikely mix of associations.
Tyner stopped a few paces in front of me, looked into my eyes-a chilly look of appraisal and indifference-and said in Spanish as he continued to look into my face, “What did you find on him?”
Standing beside the truck, with Keesha on the ground at his feet, the Irishman spoke first. “He’s got enough weaponry here to start his own fuckin’ war. He’s no bloody marine biologist, that much I promise you, Sergeant.”
The guerrilla who had searched me walked through the mud with the papers and false passport he’d taken and handed them to Tyner.
Tyner was silent for a minute or two as he read through the papers, then he shoved them back toward the guerrilla.