“The man with binoculars on the south tower. No, don’t look.” Roldan came to a halt in the center of the walkway between two of the fort's high stone towers, full in the blaze of the glaring sun.
I wasn’t tempted to look; I’d noticed the man five minutes ago. I sipped bottled water, savoring its coolness. The sip was celebratory, almost a toast; so far, so good. If it was logical that we’d check out San Felipe, the site of the ransom-for-prisoner exchange, in advance, it followed that Paolina's kidnappers would post sentries to watch for us.
It was essential they see us.
Roldan had warned that it would be hot, but I’d underestimated the word. The farm near Baranquilla had been hot. The city, at night, had been hot. The bedroom, generously ceded to Sam and me, in the bright yellow house where we’d all spent the night, had been hot. I almost smiled, remembering the lazy ceiling fan turning overhead, the small white bed, too short, too narrow, wonderfully adequate.
The fort steamed in the relentless sun. The concrete and red brick scorched the soles of my feet through my moccasins. With each breath, the air seared my lungs. Under any other circumstances, I’d have shed my rose-colored ruana, yanked open the top buttons of my white shirt.
Roldan moved into a rare patch of shade.
“You are happy?” he said.
“I will be.” Once we get Paolina back. “How much longer?”
“There could be others. Let's give all of them a chance to see us.”
“Right. What else have we got to do?”
Roldan cracked a smile. He knew how little I wanted to stand there baking like bread in an oven, how many other tasks loomed. But if this didn’t work, it was more than possible that nothing else would.
We inspected the exterior of the strong-room in the center of the courtyard. I imagined Spanish troops fighting here, battling with heavy swords and muskets, yielding ground reluctantly, step by bloody step. Soldiers must have dropped dead from the heat.
“Here they lined up the pirates for execution. See the bullet holes in this wall.” Roldan didn’t seem undone by the heat. “You spent an interesting night?”
I nodded.
“Your man, he seems like a good catch. Gianelli, it's Italian, no?”
“Yes.”
“Mafia?”
“Like you’re a drug dealer.”
Roldan nodded. “I see. There is some complexity, and also I should not be one to call names. Ignacio and the others respect him, but do they fear him? Is he ruthless?”
He used the Spanish word inhumano; it gave me pause.
“He’ll do what has to be done,” I said finally.
“The others, too, seem like good people.”
“Good” was not the right word; Ignacio's people seemed qualified. They seemed competent. They were hired guns. How much of what they did they did for money, how much for loyalty, how much for pleasure or any of a thousand other motivations, I had no way of knowing.
“Do you trust them?” I asked.
“Many choices have been made for me. I must trust them, it seems.”
The pavement baked in the sun, and sweat trickled down my back. The more I saw of the Fort of San Felipe, the more essential it seemed to find Paolina before the scheduled trade-off of gold for girl. Ignacio was right; it was a bad place. Exposed. There was no area out of sight of the battlements, no shelter from guards who could easily be stationed there. It would be like conducting business in a prison exercise yard, under constant armed watch. Roldan would walk in, but not out. And Paolina—
I remembered Roldan's description of Navas's capture by the army, his wife and baby son killed before his eyes. I had no faith in the supposed compassion of women. It was possible this Ana wanted Roldan to undergo the same torment she imagined her lover had experienced before his capture.
“Where are they more likely to keep her, the farm or the apartment?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“If you had to guess.”
“The apartment is closer to the fort. That area, the part of the city called San Diego, is one where people come and go, eating in the restaurants, drinking in the bars.”
“Either way, we’ll have to move tonight.”
“Maybe you should stay out of it. You’re not unnoticeable, with that hair and—”
“I’m being deliberately noticeable, Roldan, that's why you’re talking about it. Trust me, I’ve worked undercover before. Wait till you see me as a man.”
“I look forward to it.” He was fairly flamboyant in appearance as well, his red shirt tucked neatly into black pants, his sombrero made of dyed straw, white with a red and yellow pattern around the brim. “More though,” he went on, “I’d like to see you as a woman.”
“A woman engaged to be married.”
“That is not what I meant. Truly, I expected you to weep when you saw this man, to weaken somehow, to cede authority to him.”
“After we rescue Paolina, after she's safe, I’ll cry for a week.”
He nodded.
“What about you?” I asked.
“Me? I would like very much…” His voice slowed and stopped.
“What?”
“I would like to walk the mountain with my child. I would like to show her the lost city, the nihue where I study, the snow on the mountaintop, and the mist.”
She’d go in a flash, at the faintest hint of an invitation, I thought. To walk with her father, listen to the eerie music of the Kogi pipes. I felt a stab of jealousy.
“But we will see,” Roldan said. “This man, Gianelli, he is fond of my daughter?”
“He has been a father to her?”
“Often.” And in the future, I thought, he’d be more of one.
Not that Sam and I had spent the night discussing the future. The whole situation, the strange band of hired guns, the unfamiliar accommodations, the high level of stress, were too much for sustained conversation. The comfort of Sam was that we didn’t need to talk, that I could rest my head on his shoulder and sleep in his arms.
We were staying in the most unlikely of hideouts, a bright yellow house with green shutters and balconies dripping with flowers. Tucked between a monastery and a school, it bore no resemblance to the kind of stripped-down shelter where Mob families “go to the mattresses” in Hollywood movies. A couple of the rooms had extra cots set up next to sofas, but on the whole, it looked like a normal house, with a stocked kitchen, and framed pictures on the walls. The caretaker was a gray-haired granny who’d once been a skilled smuggler, according to Ignacio. She seemed, at any rate, unfazed by Ignacio's personnel or “equipment,” which included revolvers, RPGs, assault rifles, Kevlar vests, cell phones, and walkie-talkies.
I’d spoken to Gloria on one of the cells early this morning. She said Roz had so far been unable to make a connection between Mark Bracken or any high mucky-muck at BrackenCorp, and gold. She was now working on GSC. It was a nagging problem, the gold. Why risk a lucrative government contract for gold, for this particular gold, which couldn’t be sold to a museum? If the Colombian government found out and alerted the U.S. government, there’d be hell to pay.
Sam had listened in on the call. He’d asked me not to mention his whereabouts to Gloria.
“The woman with the glasses,” I said to Roldan, “reading the guidebook.” She was keeping close track of us, using a small mirror tucked into her guidebook. The sun had flashed off the shiner once too often.
“Good,” Roldan said. “In three minutes, we head inside.”
I hoped our trackers were suffering from the heat as much as I was. Felicia would be chatting with the landlady by now. Rafael and his lady friend would be well on their way to the country farm.
The people at the farm, I thought, should admit illicit lovers whose car had broken down. The landlady should speak freely to a prospectivetenant. Whether any of Ignacio's people thought they recognized Roldan, whether anyone decided to share the suspicion, remained a niggling worry on top of other niggling worries, like why Sam hadn’t wanted Gloria to know he was in Cartagena.
“Can we go in now?” My water bottle was half empty. My lips were parched, but I couldn’t afford to touch another drop.
Roldan nodded.
Luis and Sam had entered the fort an hour before us. The skills of the Kogi, levitation and telepathy, might be closed to us, but deception was available. I sucked in a breath. The lowest level of the fort had once been used to store dynamite. Troops stationed to guard it during battle had strict orders to touch off the fuse if all was lost, to blow the castle to kingdom come rather than let it be taken by the enemy.
We had some dynamite of our own waiting in the easternmost gallery.
Roldan led the way, moving with the sure steps that had made quick work of steep Tayrona staircases. I followed, thinking my lungs might burst into flame. I’d cherished the idea that the interior of the fort would be cool. The difference wasn’t immediate, but three levels down, it cooled perceptibly. The air was absolutely still.
“This way.” Roldan left the main corridor and entered a stone passage marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. We were almost sprinting. We didn’t want our upstairs watchers to miss us, to feel it necessary to mount a search.
“Two rights, then a left,” Roldan murmured. I’d already stripped off my ruana. I draped it over my left arm. With my right hand, I removed a pre-moistened cloth from my pocket. As we ran, I scrubbed my face clean of makeup.
Sam and Luis were waiting in the appointed place. Luis wasn’t quite as tall as I was, but his build would pass, disguised under the ruana. When I’d selected him as my double, he’d taken some ribbing. He’d also grieved the sacrifice of his mustache.
Sam hadn’t wanted his role as Roldan's double either, but no one else fit the part half as well.
I traded the ruana for the phony mustache Luis had worn into the fort. I poured the remainder of the bottled water over my head, quickly brushed my wet hair into a knot, securing it with a scrunchy and bobby pins. I topped it with Luis's hat, a shallow straw job in stripes of black and beige. Roldan and Sam traded shirts, hats, and sunglasses.
“Check,” Sam said urgently. Each of us regarded our twin, our dop-pelganger.
“Nice mustache,” Sam told me.
I fluffed Luis's wig, the most difficult item to obtain and, I thought, the diciest. I’d styled my hair in close imitation, but the shade wasn’t quite true. I wondered whether Luis had done his own makeup.
“Not bad,” I said.
“Luis,” Roldan said. “Come, let's leave the lovebirds together for a moment, no?” He motioned to the thin man in the rose ruana, and they walked ten, twenty steps, into a low side passage.
“Be careful.” I put my arms around Sam and held him close. He kissed me.
“Hey,” he murmured in my ear. “I’m always careful. What about you?”
We clung to each other in spite of the heat. I thought I heard a noise behind me.
I turned and called to Roldan. “Now?”
“Take another minute, if you like,” he said.
At the time, I thought it was kindness.