“With my father’s cameras,” Vicki said. “But how can you possibly know all this? You were just a kid at the time. Or is this all in your CIA files even while you people are telling the American public that things like this never happened?”
“Oh no. Liars are too easy to trip up. And nosy journalists are as good at that as any CIA interrogator. You can be sure the overwhelming percent of agency drones are as innocent and pure and idealistic as the American people want to believe—and have never had to deal with tough reality in the field. As to how I know . . . ”
Michael shifted position on his heels. “It can’t matter now if I enlighten you, and considering who you’ve turned out to be, you’ll find it an interesting piece of family history. You see, I’ve kind of followed in the family business. My father was Raul’s original recruiter as well as the rest of that network.”
“
Your
father?” Vicki exclaimed. “Then how come Bill didn’t know you—or at least your name?”
“I go by my mother’s name. They divorced when I was young, and since my father didn’t care to mix agency and personal life, I never did carry his name. I was barely in middle school and living in the States during that whole time period so I didn’t know anything about what happened or those photos. Not until shortly before my father died when he passed the file on to me with the rest of my inheritance.
“By that time I’d followed him into the agency and had hit my first Central American post, so he told me the whole story—wanted me to understand what he’d done—and why. Unlike him, I burned the photos first thing. But he was never sorry at the field decision he’d made that day. The Cold War was at a critical juncture at the time, and my father saw Raul and the other recruits as the future of US HUMINT—human intelligence assets—in this region.
“He wasn’t even sorry for Jeff Craig’s death—though he’d have never lifted a finger to bring it about, and certainly not the guy's wife. But he hated left-wing journalists. He was one tough old man, willing to do whatever it took to protect his country and the American way of life. Now as Raul says, my generation is a little more sentimental about collateral damage and a little more tolerant of diverse points of view.”
“Then why are you still supporting Raul?” Vicki asked. “I get Bill Taylor and your father. I mean, I don’t believe for a minute they were thinking of their country before their own careers, but I can see what it would have meant to have those pictures all over the news back then. But those are all sins of the past. They couldn’t have been held over your head. Wouldn’t it have been a lot bigger PR coup to turn Raul Hernandez in when you found out he was dealing drugs, especially in an endangered habitat? To be able to show the world you were serious about cleaning house in this country—even if you’re not? Unless—”
Suddenly, finally, it all made sense. “Unless it’s
not
sins of the past. Raul is still on your CIA payroll, isn’t he? Still doing your dirty work Americans are too good to do. That’s why you have to let him have his drug operation and keep the DEA away, just like the Human Rights Watch report accused. That’s why you had to get rid of Holly. Because she was going to expose that you were still working hand in hand with drug dealers and war criminals instead of turning them over to justice. And the American people would never put up with those kinds of methods to protect their freedoms.”
“Don’t kid yourself.” Michael sneered. “What the American people want are results. They know better than to ask for details, and we know better than to give them. Raul Hernandez has been one of our most valuable intel assets in this region for twenty years. When Guatemala got too hot for him—not even his own military colleagues had the stomach for the enthusiasm with which he performed his duties during the war—he was one of our most capable contra commanders in Nicaragua and Honduras.
“Unfortunately he’s smart. Twenty years ago may have been the first time he protected himself with a visual record, however inadvertently. But it wasn’t the last. Nor were all my predecessors as careful as I. Suffice it to say Hernandez has made it clear that if he goes down, he sings like a canary. Everything he’s ever done for the CIA. So Hernandez gets one small drug op to fund his personal pleasures with Cousin Alpiro running interference on the local end—”
“Who I’ll bet
you
ensured would end up commander of UPN.”
Michael ignored the interruption. “Meanwhile, the DEA gets to clean up the competition, courtesy of Hernandez’s outstanding, if somewhat unorthodox, intelligence network. Taking out, I may add, a lot more drug ops than they ever would on their own. And the American people continue to profit from the best intel network in the region. It’s win-win for everyone.”
“Except Holly.”
Michael’s expression hardened. “Holly was a foolish young woman who figured she didn’t have to obey the rules. That’s the irony. If she’d simply minded her own business and stayed out of the biosphere, she’d be alive today, and her precious cloud forest would soon be returning to normal, minus a bunch of invading peasants.”
“Then
you
were the American she found out about—not Bill or Joe.”
“Possibly. Somewhere in Holly’s unauthorized wanderings, she stumbled across the poppy fields and decided to do some further investigation. I just happened to be out there at the time checking the crop with Raul and Alpiro. I’d never have known Holly’d spotted us if she hadn’t come barreling up to the base as I was boarding the chopper back to the capital. When she told me she’d embassy business to discuss dealing with the biosphere, I knew she had to have seen me. I brushed her off—told her to contact me in town. When I ran into her the next day at the airport—”
“When she introduced us. Then that’s why she was so funny talking to you. I thought—”
“That she had a crush on me?” Michael’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, I’m afraid she did—thankfully. She wasn’t sure I might not be conducting some counternarcotics op in the area and didn’t want to go to the authorities without giving me a chance to explain. Except when she couldn’t get ahold of me right away, she didn’t quit digging. My mistake. Unfortunately for me—and her—she chose to go back out there just as Raul’s men were setting up camp for harvest and their
campesino
laborers were thinning out the poppy stalks.
“Holly took some interesting pictures—which once again could have ruined everything, except that she was considerate enough to call me to make sure she wasn’t throwing a monkey wrench into some counternarcotics bust. She told her friends she was going to see you, but when I checked my messages—oh yes, I did get back that night—I hightailed it over. Holly was out on the curb with her radio taxi running late. She was only too happy to get a lift and tell me all about it. Except we ended up at Hernandez’s processing plant over in Zone 4. If I’d thought for a minute she’d buy a line about national security and classified intel, I’d have used it. But even with a crush—”
“You knew Holly wouldn’t turn a blind eye! Not after the stink she was willing to raise for a few missing animals. You knew she’d go right to the press. With those pictures, they’d believe her about you too. So you took her out over the dump in one of your helicopters—maybe even this one—shot her and then threw her out. Only she landed too far out to be a simple mugging. You never expected her to live long enough to speak to me, and you forgot to take this off.” Vicki’s hands were shaking with fury as she pulled the jaguar pendant free from her khaki shirt.
“Yes, I did miss that. But I managed to rectify that little mistake while my homicide unit was prowling around the dump. I dumped it where I knew it would never turn up again. I swear, if I were superstitious, I’d think something—or someone—has been working against me since the beginning on this mission.”
“You keep calling this a mission like you were saving the world. Don’t kid yourself—or me—that this was about national security, any more than it was with your father. This was your own back and career at stake, and you know it.” Vicki wanted to strike out at him, verbally if not physically, to force a reaction.
But he only shook his head. “I’m just doing my job as any good soldier would—or my father. You think I wanted any of this? I tried to keep you out of it, to get you out of the country, and when you insisted on staying, to keep Raul from deciding you were too dangerous. I got rid of Holly’s camera and computer—oh yes, those were actually my guys in your room—and looked for that PDA just in case Holly had uploaded those last pictures onto it. Not just for myself but for you. To ensure this mission had no further unfortunate collateral damage. But like your sister, you couldn’t stop poking, and now you’ve taken away any choice. And if I had one, I’d take it.”
At the flat conviction of Michael’s tone, Vicki actually believed him.
“You have no idea how tenuous the world situation is right now. The war on terror is at as critical a juncture as the Cold War ever was. Support is failing. The American people are just too soft for a protracted fight, even for their own freedom. We—people like me who understand—are the ones who have to hold the line until reality sinks in that our very existence may be at stake here. It’s not just front line soldiers who sometimes have to make sacrifices—even the ultimate sacrifice. Aren’t two lives—or a few hundred villagers—better than our entire civilization going up in smoke?”
“Funny, that’s just the kind of thing the terrorists say,” Vicki answered scornfully. “The bottom line is, after all these years, you and your buddies are still claiming to stand for democracy and justice and human rights even while you’ve been using these people and plenty of others like them to get work done that’s too dirty for your own hands. Because like Joe said, there’s always one more war. One more excuse for you to play God. This time it’s the war on terrorism, but it’s all the same underneath. And if your methods here came out in the open, some ugly comparisons might be drawn. So you—or your bosses—decided damage control was more important than the life of an American citizen.”
Vicki stared at Michael with conviction to match his own. “But you’ll never get away with it, no matter what happens here today. ‘Do what is right and do not give way to fear’—that’s not just for people; it’s for countries too. Every time you guys forget that, it always winds up going sour on you. In the end it’s the American people you say you’re trying to protect who suffer the most for it.”
Michael’s expression was so furious that Vicki braced herself for him to strike. But she wouldn’t let his rage, the hostile twitching of the two crouched soldiers, Raul’s self-satisfied smirk from the copilot’s seat, daunt her. Lifting her chin unflinchingly, she demanded, “So what now? I presume you’re going to kill me too.”
Michael slid his Glock into the small of his back. “Not at all, no more than I killed your sister. Remember—we Americans don’t get our own hands dirty. I’m just going to hop a flight back to the embassy once our cargo’s off-loaded, just in time to celebrate the latest US-Guatemalan counter-narcotics success. I’ll have an airtight alibi when a distraught tourist takes her own life on the site of her sister’s murder.”
He lifted the jaguar pendant so that the emerald eyes glowed in a shaft of light. “This clutched in your hand will make a nice touch. You can be sure I’ll attend your funeral and be genuinely regretful.”
Michael went forward to look out the windshield. His question shouted above the roar of the helicopter was in Spanish. “You have enough fuel to get to Belize?”
Raul Hernandez turned his head. “Yes, but it will not need to be so far. We’ll drop the load for my cousin when we are close enough. For a commission, he’ll hold it until it can be discreetly recovered. Then we’ll be able to fly to the capital freely for anyone to search.”
“Drop me off at Rio Dulce. I’d like to be in plenty of company for the next twenty-four hours. I should be back in the capital by morning.”
“And the girl?”
“She’s in your hands. You know what to do.”
Vicki paid little attention to the shouted conversation. There was a certain peace in total resignation. She turned away as Michael headed back in her direction.