Kate bends down and unwraps the package enough to see twelve bottles of Bolivian beer. She straightens up and keeps her eyes fixed on the cut-out picture of the Sacred Heart that the conductor has tacked up over the steering wheel. Trying to look as if she is deep in prayer, Kate reflects that if ever she needed to pray it is now, for she has become not only a fugitive but a smuggler. Oh God! How her father would enjoy this story—if she lived to tell it. The officers—finished with the Peruvians—are talking and gesturing toward the bus with the two lone Americans still on it.
In a few minutes another officer of the Guardia Civil boards the bus and heads straight for the Peace Corps worker. Short, with shiny straight black hair and intense dark eyes, the officer asks to see his passport. His voice is polite but cold. After a careful inspection, he asks the American to stand up and open his bags for a “routine check.” The Peace Corps worker does as he is asked and even tries a few friendly words to defuse the tension, but the officer is businesslike, unsmiling. Watching his compact, powerful body, Kate feels a prickle on the back of her neck.
He turns to her next, removing his hat. “Por favor, señorita, su pasaporte.” It is a demand, not a request. Kate knows that by calling her señorita he is deliberately ignoring the fact that she is a nun. This makes her apprehensive. His accent is not that of the Altiplano, but she hasn’t been in Peru long enough to place it.
“I don’t have it with me, officer. Since I was traveling within the country, I didn’t think I would need it. I am Sister Mary Katherine from the Dominican nuns in Juliaca.”
“Stand up, please.” His eyes slide down her body in the practiced, almost involuntary way of Latin men, and then she notices him staring at the smudged dirt on the front of her white scapular. He gestures toward the brown paper package, half hidden by her long skirt. “What’s in the bag?”
Kate freezes. If she tells the truth she will implicate the woman. But how can she explain twelve bottles of Bolivian beer?
“The package isn’t mine. I think there’s beer in it.”
The officer’s eyes are expressionless. “Then to whom does this package belong?” he asks in Spanish with exaggerated politeness.
Kate looks directly into eyes almost on a level with her own. “I don’t know,” she says evenly, trying to keep a tremor out of her voice.
At that he wheels around and barks out a command, all pretense of politeness gone. “Follow me. We’re taking you in for questioning.” Then he stops and comes back to the seat where she still stands, unable to move. With a lithe movement he reaches down and picks up the package, holding it away from his body as if it were garbage.
Kate follows him then, and as she steps off the bus into the harsh sun the people move back in silence as the officer strides to his jeep. He motions for her to get in the back, and then quietly gives orders to his men. Another soldier hops into the driver’s seat, and in a moment they are speeding down the treacherous mountain road, back toward Arequipa.
As in a dream, Kate watches the deep blue of the mountains as they appear and disappear above the hairpin turns in the road. They drive fast, the driver honking his horn at each curve to warn any approaching car or truck. By now it is almost noon, and the sun directly overhead is hot. Descending through shade and sun, the winding curves, Kate feels nausea rise in her. Finally they come to a tin hut with a Peruvian flag, slightly faded, hanging over the door at an angle. Two mangy black dogs drowse in the dirt.
While the driver helps Kate out, his superior is already striding toward the first building. As Kate and the driver enter the hut, the officer is speaking gruffly to a heavy soldier who is eating a plate of sausage and rice, a bottle of beer at his elbow, at the only desk in the small front room. The soldier wipes his mouth and stands up.
The officer motions for Kate to follow him. She enters a large room with several windows looking upon jagged mountains. Surprised by the clean, orderly air of the place, Kate tries not to stare. Books on crude, homemade bookshelves line the walls from top to bottom. A few pieces of pottery adorn the shelves, and leaning against one wall on a low bookcase is a framed print of Diego Rivera’s The Flower Seller. Kate recognizes it because she had once cut this same picture out of a calendar and hung it on the wall of her sixth-grade classroom at St. Rita’s. She stands by the lieutenant’s desk watching him as he moves restlessly around the room, loosening his collar and rolling up his sleeves. He seems almost to have forgotten her when he suddenly goes to the door and asks the man in the next room to bring them two bottles of Orange Crush. Finally he tells Kate to sit down. He sits in his desk chair, facing her.
“I am Lieutenant Roberto Vargas, in charge of a small patrol here that does routine checks on buses and trucks for smuggling. However, it is very seldom that I encounter such an interesting case as I have today.” For the first time his face relaxes and a glint of humor shines in his eyes.
