15

 

When Kristin retired to her bedroom at the hacienda, she was appalled by the apparition she saw in the mirror. The lipstick dots and streaks of dried mud on her face made her look like a fugitive from a horror movie. In her bath, she spent extra time washing her hair. She went down to supper wearing the same pastel skirt and sweater she’d worn the night before. Sledge was already there, dressed in slacks and an open-collared shirt. When he was cleaned up, he didn’t look too bad. She needed his knowledge and protection, but his presence brought with it an almost physical pressure that made her bridle.

After supper, the entire group drove to Ramón’s office in a well-armed convoy. The guards waited outside while Ramón and Elena took Kristin and Sledge upstairs. Ramón showed Kristin five digital cameras, and she chose one of the same make as hers. When the memory card fit, Ramón led her to a computer with twenty-two -inch color monitor. Kristin clicked the mouse a couple of times, and a picture of a stunningly beautiful blue and yellow bird appeared on the screen.

Elena sighed. “It’s beautiful.”

Kristin ignored her and asked, “Can you do thumbnails?”

“Sí,” Ramón said. He pressed a few keys and thumbnails of the photos appeared. He stepped back and motioned Kristin forward.

She took the mouse, scrolled down to the end of the roll, and clicked on the last photo.

The image of a contorted, half-naked body appeared on the screen. The image was fully as horrible as Kristin remembered the original. The exposed skin on the body was marred by hard-looking blisters and fresh blood seeped from his mouth and nose.

Elena gagged once and ran from the room. Ramón and Sledge remained silent.

Kristin flicked through the remaining photos of the dead men. The eleven images proved to be everything she’d hoped for. They showed the convulsed bodies in full color under bright sunlight. One frame pictured the entire scene. The others were close-ups revealing more blisters, more blood seeping from mouths, ears, and noses, and pin-pointed pupils in the eyes. Even now, the sight of it almost made her retch.

She heard Ramón move quickly out to join Elena.

Sledge came forward and took the mouse from her hand. Kristin watched anxiously as he studied each photo in detail. Panorama Weekly could hire experts to advise about her story, but she hoped Sledge would make some suggestions.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Sledge grimaced. “You’re not only the stubbornest brat in Colombia, you’re the luckiest.”

She caught her breath. “Why lucky?”

“Lucky to be alive. There’s no doubt those men were killed by chemical agents. Several different ones, I think. One had to be a blister agent like mustard, and one must have been a nerve gas. I don’t know what else might have been used.”

“So why am I lucky to be alive?”

“The fresh blood proves you took the pictures soon after the men were killed. If the nerve gas had still been around, your pretty blue eyes would have had no more pupils than those poor guys in the photos.”

Kristin shuddered.

“So the nerve agent had to be something like sarin, which dissipates quickly,” Sledge continued. “If it had been a persistent agent like VX, you wouldn’t be here. In death a person's muscles all relax, including the eyes. You must have taken that photograph so soon after the moment of death that the pupils hadn't dilated. A few seconds sooner and you'd be dead.” He rubbed his jaw with his fist. “The blister agent is a problem. The ones I know don’t go away quickly. The one used here should still have been active when you arrived. But if it had, you’d have more marks on your complexion than Elena’s red dots.”

“So we have a mystery.”

“One the technical intelligence people will have to solve. Actually, more than one. I have no idea what caused the bleeding.”

“Have you heard of anything like it?” Kristin wouldn’t let go until she had to.

“Something fairly close.” Sledge seemed to be thinking out loud. “The old Soviet Union used multiple agents in Yemen, Laos, and Afghanistan.”

He paused. “Did you hear any aircraft before you found the bodies?”

“None at all. Why?”

“From what I’ve heard, the Soviets and their clients usually delivered their chemicals by air—like the ‘yellow rain’ used against Hmong villages in Laos in the seventies. Something like fifteen or twenty thousand Hmong were killed. Survivors outside the gassed villages saw what happened. The attacking planes put out different colors of smoke that drifted to the ground. When it got there, people fell down and began to die. Then a second group of planes would drop a yellow powder over everything. Witnesses said the victims went into convulsions and bled like the poor fellows in your photographs.”

“What could cause the bleeding?”

“No one ever explained it. The bleeding sounds like Ebola virus, but that wasn’t around in the seventies. Besides, it isn’t quick enough. Whatever the Soviets used was almost instant.”

“You said this happened in other places, too?”

“In the sixties in Yemen and the eighties in Afghanistan. The stories were similar.”

“Then why haven’t people heard about it?”

“As a journalist, you ought to know. Things certain people don’t want to hear don’t get reported. At best, they get reported once and dropped.”

“That’s a cynical thing to say.”

Sledge shrugged. “It happens to be true. If a fact doesn’t fit someone’s idea of what ought to be true, it doesn’t exist. Remember what you said about Chozadolor? The reporters assumed the paramilitaries were guilty, so they didn’t ask. What I’m leading up to is that we have to show these photos to the CIA. They’re too important to hold back.”

Kristin met his gaze. “I’m not giving up my story, and I’m not letting go of my pictures. The First Amendment—”

Sledge rolled his eyes. “OK, you have constitutional rights. Now answer me this: What are you going to do about the factory we saw?”

“Someone will do something about it when I publish my story.” Even to herself she didn’t sound convincing.

Sledge leaned against the table, his hands grasping and re-grasping its edges. “When you publish your story, everything in that factory will disappear within two days. Investigators will find an empty building. You’ll have a story that can’t be confirmed. Your word and mine won’t convince anyone. Without corroborating evidence about the factory, everything else will be called into question.”

“But the photographs—”

“Prove that someone killed twenty men with something that looks like chemical agents. Everything else hangs on your word and mine.”

The hard, hot brick took residence in Kristin’s stomach again. This time it felt like the cornerstone to the Washington Monument. She remembered the trouble she’d had convincing her editors about small, non-controversial details. She was still a junior reporter, and she’d received this chance only because Steve Spinner pressured her editors. They didn’t expect her to come up with much, and what she’d found directly contradicted the “conventional wisdom” about Chozadolor. At best, then, she was facing an uphill battle.

She met Sledge’s gaze. “I’m not giving up my story, but I’m willing to listen.”

“No one can keep you from printing your story,” he said. “Hang on to your memory card and get your magazine behind you.”

“What else? You said something about the factory.”

“It has to be investigated and taken out. You and I can’t do that. I doubt that even the Colombian army has the capability. They’d need chemical suits, special equipment, and special training. Otherwise, they’d wind up like those bodies in the field. So we have to get our information and copies of your photos—hard-copy prints—to the CIA.”

Kristin said nothing, and Sledge continued. “We saw a planeload of that stuff go out to heaven knows where. We don’t know how many loads have gone before, and we don’t know who’s behind the operation. It’s certain that Diego Contreras couldn’t have put this thing together on his own. We also don’t know why Contreras decided to use his product on his own countrymen. There’s too much we don’t know. That means we’d better put our information in the hands of experts.”

Kristin gave in with a sigh. “So we go to the American embassy and ask for the CIA?”

“They’d give us the routine treatment for walk-ins—have us screened by a junior State Department type. If we convinced him, he’d have to convince the CIA Chief of Station that we’re worth fooling with. Then they’d assign us to a case officer, and we’d have to convince him. We could get tied up for a week.”

“Do you know a better way?”

“Go in at the top level where someone can make a decision. The man who can do that is a retired CIA agent named Roger Brinkman. He’s old as the Andes and must know half the people in the world. What’s more, he gets favors from them. Steve Spinner paid for your rescue, but Brinkman’s contacts made it possible. When he phones the CIA, the director listens. If he doesn’t, a dozen senators will call him to ask why.”

“How do we contact Brinkman?”

“We start with a phone call. Then we’ll use encrypted e-mail for a bare-bones report, but we won’t e-mail the photos. The Internet is too open for that. Brinkman will cut through the bureaucracy and get us to the right people—probably soon after we arrive in the States. We’ll need a set of prints for that meeting and one to express-mail to Brinkman.”

Kristin felt gloom settling in. “Then I can kiss my story good-bye.”

“You’ll still have your story. The most they can ask is to delay publication until they take action against the factory. Then you’ll have an even bigger story.”

Kristin’s gloom dissipated like fog on a clear summer’s day. “I’d better get started on those prints.”

Sledge pushed away from the table. “First, let’s see if Ramón will lend us his communications.”

They found Ramón sitting with Elena in the outer office. “...running off to Chozadolor,” he was saying. “Dear one, do you have no sense at all?”

She showed him a charming smile. “Absolutely none. That’s why I married you, mi corazon.”

Thus bested, Ramón seemed happy to withdraw and help Sledge contact Roger Brinkman. Kristin hoped the older man was as good as Sledge claimed.

She sat beside Elena. “I can’t thank you enough for your help.”

Elena giggled. “Don’t tell my husband, but I was scared out of my wits the whole time we were gone. Now I am going to be very domestic for a very long time.”

They fell silent. Elena closed her eyes and appeared to sleep, while Kristin brooded over her upcoming encounter with Roger Brinkman and the CIA. She’d be entering a strange world where she didn’t know who to trust. Afterwards, she had to face her own skeptical editors.

But more deeply, questions had begun stirring within her again—questions she thought she’d consigned to the trash heap long ago. She’d believed modern people were smart enough and strong enough not to need an authoritarian God. That sounded well enough in the hothouse environment of the university and among her sophisticated peers in the newsroom. But these past three weeks had shown her greater depths of evil than she’d ever thought possible.

To face that evil, she’d need the strength her parents found through faith in their God. But she had no such faith. Without it, she must face the world’s evil alone.