Chapter 6

Yes, the hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering worship to God.

—Jesus

 

Father Free had been awake now for over twenty-four hours, and he had a couple of hours to go before daybreak lifted the nightly curfew. He sat at a table with the beautiful Yolanda Rubia in the back of the restaurant El Ranchón Cuzcatlán. A single paddle fan stirred up the flies overhead and drained power from the lamp on the wall. With the checkered tablecloth, the softened light and their hunched postures, they might be mistaken for a couple. Every so often he caught a whiff of her perfume over the burned-diesel smell of his shirt and jeans.

“It was like nothing I have ever seen,” Yolanda said, and rubbed her arms as though chilled. “And you, Father, know the kinds of things I have seen. You have seen as much yourself.”

Not yet dawn, not yet the end of Holy Week, and Father Free sweated out the curfew with Yolanda, a half-dozen snoring guerrilla leaders and his third pot of coffee. Yolanda drank rum, sugared with lemon. He remembered it was Rico Toledo’s drink, as it had once been his own. After the embassy, the Archbishop’s office and its broadcast station had been bombed, and Father Free’s room was behind the sound booth. The Garcia government was a Gardener government, and they feared a Catholic retaliation.

With good reason, Father Free thought.

Both the Peace and Freedom guerrillas and the predominantly Catholic campesinos had looked for an excuse for an all-out uprising against the Gardeners. Father Free had fought the fire at the Archbishop’s office for hours, while outside the poor people fought the Gardener army detachment with rocks and bottles. Twenty people died, including two seminarians.

Father Free had married Rico and Grace Toledo, baptized their son, and he did not believe for a moment that Toledo was guilty. But this news that Yolanda brought him now, of hundreds of people bursting into flame at ViraVax, had him scared. Few people knew of the ViraVax facility, and only a fistful of that few knew the kinds of things that went on out there. Father Free was one of those few.

“And none of your people got this melting sickness?”

“No.” She sipped. “Not yet, thanks God.”

Five years ago she’d have made the sign of the cross when she said that, he thought.

He remembered, too late, not to rub his eyes again.

“There’s a good side,” he offered. “Your team saved the kids and turned them over to U.S. custody. That’s some negotiating clout that you’ve been needing lately, since Sonja’s grandfather’s the Secretary of State.”

“And I intend to use it,” Yolanda said. “This will be the time of times, Father. Truly, the final offensive. You should stay here at the cooperativa for a while. Many priests are shot in times like these.”

“Easter is supposed to be a time of joy, and resurrection, and moving forward,” he said, staring into his coffee. “I can’t believe . . .”

A soft chirp sounded from his Sidekick, and Father Free pressed his earpiece to listen privately.

“Father Free? Chief Solaris.”

Solaris and Toledo had both gone through his ethics course at the Academy. Father Free had always found Toledo a straight shooter and Solaris frightening, and twenty years ago he never would have believed that either of them would still be in his life. It was Rico who had given him the nickname “Luke the Spook,” and in an academy of intelligence officers, the name “Spook” stuck fast. It was Solaris the Sneak that he never trusted.

“Yes.”

“Give me your address. I’ll have you picked up right away.”

“I’m comfortable where I am, thanks,” Father Free said. “It’s been a long night.”

“It has, indeed,” Solaris said. “Toledo’s here, badly injured. He’ll want to speak with you when he wakes up. If he wakes up.”

“I’m at Ranchón Cuzcatlán,” he said. “Send some clothes, Rico’s size; mine are ruined. And nobody comes inside, this is neutral turf.”

“There is no neutral turf anymore, Father,” Solaris said. The word “Father” had a contemptuous edge to it. “Those days are gone forever. Your escort will be outside in fifteen minutes. You’ll have to excuse our limited selection of apparel.”

Father Free pressed the “break” button.

“Make sure your gear is screened,” he told Yolanda. “There’ll be army outside in fifteen minutes and we don’t want to tempt them to look in the back.”

“It’s Rico, isn’t it?” she asked. “He’s alive?”

“So far,” he said.

“Thanks God,” Yolanda said.

This time she made the sign of the cross.