Four of the tiny figures halted at a distance of thirty feet, then turned away and melted out of sight into the fog, their footsteps eerily silent on the rocky ground. One alone continued to approach, moving stiffly as a walking statue. In his right hand, he held a gourd-like object that he carried with the majesty of a scepter.
Roldan bowed and spoke to the little man, using the same tongue in which he’d addressed the gold statuette, musical and gruff at the same time. I couldn’t decipher a single word. The language was like nothing I’d ever heard. It had strange clicking noises and odd gutturals. Since my ears were ineffective, I used my eyes.
The top of the little man's head reached no higher than my upper arm. Thick salt-and-pepper hair flowed from beneath his peaked hat to his shoulders. The backs of his hands were as wrinkled as tree bark, the skin on his face deeply lined mahogany, his feet bare. He could have been fifty or sixty, or twice that old. I’d never seen anyone like him. I couldn’t help but stare.
Roldan turned to me and said, “You must understand this: They came for the gold.” His voice seemed to resonate oddly, almost to echo. Maybe it was the effect of the altitude, some hollow by-product of the mist.
“Who came? Why? Who are you—”
“I will translate for you what Mama Parello wishes you to know.”
The little man had a name. “Mama?” I repeated. Roldan smiled. “It is a Kogi word, a Kogi concept. He is a priest, a shaman, a mama of the Kogi people.”
“He lives here?” I motioned to encompass the stone city. Roldan shook his head no.
“But you expected him to meet you here.” With no clocks, no phones, the little men might have waited for hours, days, in this timeless place.
“Yes, because I spoke to him in the spirit, in Aluna. It doesn’t matter that you don’t understand, gringa. He is here; we are here. You have seen, but now, you must understand”
“Understand what?”
“Why I cannot help my daughter.”
Before I could protest, the small man held up his hands and spoke. The words sounded like birdsong as much as they sounded like speech.
Roldan smiled again. “He wishes to know if you are my woman.”
“Tell him no.”
The little man chirped and clacked, his lined face animated. Roldan answered in the strange clicking language, then translated the little man's response.
“Your reply makes him sad; he says I need a woman. He does not understand how a woman with red hair comes to walk the mountain, but he wishes you to know that this place, the heart of the world, is protected. He asks for your promise that you will never return.”
“Consider it given.”
“No,” Roldan said. “Do not take this lightly. You must truly promise. If I am to tell you, if we are to tell you, we must have your word of honor that you will say nothing to endanger these people. If you cannot give your word, I must do what Luisa says I must do.”
Kill me.
“If I can save Paolina without endangering these people, I will,” I said.
Roldan spoke, perhaps translating what I’d said. Then he held up the stringed beads I’d found in the hut, and gave them to the little man, who beamed and nodded.
I will return them to their owners, Roldan had told me when he’d appropriated them. So the small men had once lived in the gumdrop huts.
Roldan said, “He does not understand the color of your hair, although it is not strange to him because he has seen it in the spirit world.”
As he spoke, the little man dipped a stick into the gourd and sucked the end of it. The gourd looked like a relic from the Gold Museum, what was it called? A poporo. One of his cheeks was taut and rounded, as though it held a plug of chewing tobacco. The woven bag dangling at his side was stuffed with coca leaves, like Roldan's.
Spirit world, partially explained.
I said, “What happened here?”
“What do you see?”
“A helicopter crash. When did it happen?” I found his reticence infuriating. What did a crashed copter on a remote mountaintop have to do with Paolina's kidnapping?
“Weeks ago, I cannot give you a date. Time is not measured here the way it is measured in cities. Here we have planting and sowing—”
“Just tell me. What happened?”
“You know your country has a military presence here.”
“They train Colombian soldiers to wipe out coca fields and arrest drug dealers. They’ve done it for years. Big deal.”
“There are secret troops,” he said, “U.S. Special Forces, stealing the last gold from the last tribe that protects the earth. Acting with the knowledge of my government.”
“Is this Cabrera talking?” I bit my lip. The helicopter crash must be the journalist's big story, her history-making revelation.
“Your soldiers may say they come only to spray the coca bushes. Look around you. There are no fields of coca here.”
The fuselage, burned as well as twisted, had once been painted black. The cockpit was so badly damaged that most of the equipment had melted into a lumpy mass.
“Luisa wishes to document this travesty, to make a public outcry. She wants me to break my silence, to tell the people what my government, in connivance with yours, tried to do here.”
Cabrera was right: The story was made for the news. Roldan, already a folk hero, returning from the dead to level charges against the government. A secret deal with the U.S. involving the theft of archeolog-ical treasures. The heritage of a country betrayed. The U.S. caught doing what it used to do best, interfering in Latin America. If it was true, it was headline news. If it was true, it could topple the Colombian government.
I gazed at the wreckage. I thought the twin-rotor aircraft was a Chinook, a smaller version of the gunship the army was currently flying in the mountains of Afghanistan. I could see no insignia on the downed copter.
I said, “Why are you so sure your government is involved?”
“Do you understand anything of history? That this country is still a democracy is nothing less than a miracle. For fifty years, our candidates have been shot down like dogs, yet someone always rises to grab the standard and lead the charge. And now, betrayal again! There's nothing the government will not sell the gringos, our oil, our gold, our heritage.”
“When did you learn about this?”
Roldan said, “Learn about it? I saw it. My people and I heard the helicopter. At first we thought it was hunting us, but then it disappeared behind the peak and reappeared too close to the ground. I thought the pilot was out of fuel and would crash. I took a party to search. It took us too long to get here.”
Mama Parello bowed his head; it sounded like he was praying.
“By the time we arrived, they’d found the gold. They seemed to know exactly where to dig, as though they had a map.”
“Is that out of the question?”
“Many of the guaqueros, the tomb robbers, have a spot they research, but never dig. They call it their ‘bank account.’ But I know of no one who's come this far up the mountain.”
“Go on.”
“When we got here, the soldiers were loading bags into the copter. They gave us no time to ask questions. They began firing automatic weapons. We returned fire with the few rifles we had. They tried to lift off, but the downdrafts are tricky in these mountains. And gold is heavy”
I imagined the desperation of the hurried departure, the crash.
“Yes,” Roldan said. “It went up, up, but only a few hundred meters. The front rotor hesitated, the chopper tilted. There was a moment when I thought they would simply land again, but they had no wish to continue the battle. They tried to rise. The copter crashed on its side. The fuel tank ruptured and ignited.”
The mama spoke; his face solemn.
“They killed a moro,” Roldan translated. “He is irreplaceable.”
“What's a moro?”
“When a Kogi child is born, the mamas come, and if the Great Mother tells them, they take that special child for the priesthood, to be a mama someday. These children, the moros, are the greatest treasure of the tribe. To make a moro is an incalculable cost. The family loses the child's labor forever. The moro, to be trained, lives in a cave for nine years without daylight. He must learn the secrets of Aluna, of the Great Mother, and for that he needs silence and introspection. He needs to learn to see beyond this world.”
“How did the moro die?”
“Before the soldiers tried to take off, they shot him like a dog. The mamas say his death caused the crash.”
I shook my head. What did people like the mahogany man know about the mechanics of helicopters?
Roldan said, “There is everything in Aluna. Before a thing can be, the Great Mother must think of it in Aluna. Everything is part of the Kogi World, even helicopters.”
His way of answering my unspoken questions was getting on my nerves.
“With the death of the moro, we thought this terrible thing had come to an end.” His eyes seemed to focus on something far beyond the misty mountain peak.
It hadn’t come to an end. That's what he’d brought me here to understand: This terrible thing was linked to Paolina's kidnapping.
I said, “Let me get this straight. It was two or three weeks after the crash that the kidnappers got in touch?”
“Yes. Demanding the gold in exchange for my child. Gold they’d failed to steal here. Gold that is not mine to give.”
“But how did they know? How did they know about Paolina? How did they know about you? Did Cabrera tell them?” The journalist might be trying to manipulate him, trying to grab a big story by the throat to make her name, nationally and internationally.
The Kogi spoke in his strange language.
“What did he say?” I demanded.
“There were two helicopters.”
“Yes, but that one did not carry gold.”
“Someone on the second helicopter must have recognized you.”
“Or they could have seen me on the film.”
“Film?”
“Mama Parello says they used the ‘black boxes’ as they looted. I saw cameras pointing at us from the helicopter as it flew away.”
“Who would recognize you, know you, wearing what you’re wearing? Here in the mountains?”
“I cannot say.”
“Can’t say or won’t say?”
“It makes no difference. The kidnappers have not called back.”
“You offered them the wounded American.”
“In exchange for the girl. It seemed reasonable, a life for a life.”
“What will you do with him if they don’t call? Kill him?”
“I pray that, in this life, I am done with killing.”
He might be an outlaw, he might have been a drug dealer, but when he spoke about killing, I found myself believing him. Still, the wounded soldier might die in the hut, of infection or disease. The Kogi might have saved Roldan with the bark of trees, but the American could have undi-agnosed internal injuries. My faith in ancient remedies was limited.
Thoughts of the wounded man made me remember. “Who is Gee-mo?” I said.
Mama Parello raised both arms, hands outspread. His words sounded like the chatter of birds, but I caught the repeated sound: Gee-mo.
“Where did you hear this name?” Roldan said.
“You stuck me back in the hut with the wounded soldier. You must have hoped I’d learn something.”
“He mentioned Gee-mo?”
“Who is he?”
Roldan glanced at the wizened man for guidance. The mama slowly nodded his head, and Roldan said, “If his name passed the lips of the gringo, possibly a traitor.”
“One of the mamas?”
“Not a priest, but a Kogi. A few have intermarried with people from the coast. It's difficult for the children. Usually they stay with the tribe, but some learn Spanish as well as the Kogi language, and they help the tribe by bartering with the outside world. Gee-mo is one of these half-and-half Kogi. He will be found and questioned.”
“When? How?”
“I can tell you only what Mama Parello wishes you to know.”
“Come on; he won’t be able to tell one way or another.”
Roldan shot me a glance. “He knows.”
Whether he knew or not, the picture was starting to make sense, the fragments of the mosaic coming together. Gee-mo, the traitor, reveals the location of the gold. Two copters come for it. One crashes; one gets away. Someone recognizes Roldan, either in person or on film, and sees another way to get the gold. Paolina's kidnapping and the ransom demand follow: Paolina, in exchange for the holy gold.
I said, “Cabrera wants to make this front-page news. She wants governments to fall. What do you want?”
“For myself, nothing.”
I stared into his eyes and waited. I thought: A woman could get lost in those eyes.
He said, “I wish only to make it as it was before this evil thing happened. The mamas are unsure whether the desecrated gold can be re-sanctified. The pots in which it was buried are broken, and they no longer know the words to bless the Mothers. They hope, by divination, to ask the Mother for guidance.”
Divination. I stared at him blankly.
“The beads you recovered are divining beads. It is a good omen that you found them.”
I’m no mystic. I’m a cop to my gut; I collect facts.
I said, “Did they bury the moro?”
“They took his body away.”
“The others? The soldiers?”
“We covered them with rocks. The scavengers would have taken them if we hadn’t.”
“Let me look at them. Let me look at the helicopter.”
“My men have been over the ground.”
“Let me look.”
Roldan's eyebrows arched. “You know about helicopters?”
“I know about crime scenes. I know how to search. Let me look.”