Conspiracy in Kiev

of ketchup. Anatoli saw a curled pinky finger hit the floor.

Then the bat hit Anatoli’s wrist. The gun flew away from him. Anatoli’s hand and wrist were then rendered nerveless and paralyzed from a second blow.

“Bring him down! Down!” the leader said from outside the fight.

One of the intruders had a police club and used it with remarkable efficiency. He walloped Anatoli on the left side of the temple so hard that it crushed the cartilage in his ear. Another blow to the midpoint of his face broke his nose. Then there was one to his groin that took much of the fight out of him.

Anatoli went down hard onto his face, overpowered. The fight had taken a full minute. Championship bouts one-on-one often took less.

Anatoli lay stunned but not unconscious on the old Pakistani carpet that covered the floor. Someone grabbed him by the hair, lifted his head, and slammed it down again. He felt his hands pulled behind his back and cuffed. His mouth was hot and salty, and little shards of his teeth floated on his tongue. His physical fight was gone but a rage still surged within him. If he ever got out of here, he swore to himself, he would find all these men and kill them.

He was still breathing hard, clinging to consciousness, wondering how he could have been so careless or who had betrayed him. He wondered if the redhead had been a setup to get him out of his apartment. And how had they found him?

Voices. Voices in the room. A voice talking on a cell phone: the man who had stayed back from the fight. He was obviously the leader. Even dazed and defeated, Anatoli knew how these things worked.

“Yeah, we got him,” the voice said.

There was a pause. Then it continued. Same guy.

“Are you kidding me? Of course he fought, you moron. He fought like a stuck hog. What’d you expect… that he’d come to tea with us at Fortnum’s?”

There was another pause. Then, “One of my men got clubbed in the balls. Another got a bullet wound. We need some doctors fast.”

In the background Anatoli could hear the man he had shot wailing and crying. Anatoli wished to hell he had killed him.

“Should I put him down, Mark?” Anatoli heard someone say.

“Put him down,” the commander said in response.

Anatoli hadn’t been in America often and his English wasn’t strong. But it seemed like most of these men who had attacked him were English.

They looked it. They smelled it. They sounded it.

But their leader, Mark, the one with the cell phone, the one who had stayed clear of things until the dirty work was done, was American. Anatoli could tell by the accent. If he’d known his American accents better, he would have recognized the soft strains of the Tidewater region of Virginia.

Through a broken nose, shattered teeth, and a fractured jaw, Anatoli cursed his captors. But there was no physical fight left in him now. Darkness came down on him like a collapsing brick wall.

Everything hurt. Consciousness faded. And even as darkness descended, his right eye twitched uncontrollably, even more than usual.

Then one of the assailants pressed something to the side of his head. The nose of a pistol, it felt like. A few seconds later, there was a tremendous explosion and darkness.

SIXTY-SEVEN

From the day she arrived in Barranco Lajoya, Alex kept her eyes and ears open on behalf of her employer, Joseph Collins. Her assignment had been to take a good look at things and report back. What’s being done right? What might be done better? And above all, see who might be trying to push these poor indigenous people off their land.

Identify who and report back.

To that end, Alex embedded herself in the everyday life of the village, the better to catch the pace and feel of the place. The better to observe.

Father Martin installed her in a thatched hut located behind the church. Some of the wives from the village, accompanied by their daughters, had scrubbed the concrete floor of the hut with a heavy bleach and disinfectant before Alex’s arrival. As noxious as the smell was, it kept the insects at bay, though when she lay down to sleep, she could see the insects crawling above her, through the leaves and branches of the roof. There was also a small supply of citronella candles on a wooden table and a small can of insecticide.

Bedding was a thin foam mattress spread on the floor, plus a sheet and mosquito netting. There was a ring of chili powder around the sleeping area, which kept most of the crawling spiders, lice, and red ants away. In the evening, two candles lit the room, and Alex was cautioned to leave one on at night to deter the occasional small snake that might intrude. Rattlers, she was reminded, could sense the body heat of their prey and would strike in complete darkness.

The best plumbing in town was also in the back of the church, in an attached shed, but this was in a single open room where food supplies were also kept. When Alex used it, two of the women from the town, whom she quickly befriended, “stood guard” for her so that no men would walk in. The village men were too well mannered, or intimidated, to burst in on her, but accidents could happen.

Bathing was rudimentary, too. About a hundred yards through the woods there was a mountain stream which was about twenty feet wide where it ran past the village. The women of Barranco Lajoya considered it safe in terms of pollution and wildlife. They had been using it to bathe and wash laundry for many generations.

The men tended to be away during the day, so the women would go together in the late afternoon before dusk, maybe ten to fifteen at a time, usually with many children. Alex tended to go to the river with the younger women, the wives who were sometimes barely older than sixteen, but mostly in their twenties.

They would disrobe completely, leave their clothes in neat piles on the riverbank and move quickly into a meter of rushing water. They would scrub themselves with bars of a strong Mexican soap. The water came from a great elevation and was surprisingly refreshing. A strong current kept it clean.

Alex was hesitant at the procedure at first and reluctant to undress in front of the women of the village, though the venue was really no more than an outdoor version of a women’s locker room. But she quickly got used to the procedure. In a strange primal way she felt at one with God’s nature when she waded into the cool stream and then slowly submerged herself. It occurred to her that the topography here had probably not changed much in two thousand years, since the time of Christ. People had probably been bathing in this tributary for just as long. Before many days had passed, she looked forward to the daily ritual.

She had heard that sometimes soldiers came through the area and would stand on the opposite riverbank, watch the women, and shout to them. Sometimes the soldiers would even take pictures. The men of the village tolerated this. They knew better than to challenge the soldiers. Everyone in Venezuela knew better than to challenge groups of military.

Alex kept an eye out for the soldiers. She had no inclination to put on a show for them. But she did see them once. Two of the younger soldiers were taking pictures from the opposite shore while Alex and three others were bathing in knee-deep water.

Surprisingly to Alex, the women bathing made no effort to cover themselves and actually waved to the men in uniform. One blew kisses.

Later one of the women explained. “We are safer when the soldiers come by to watch us,” she said. “Because we bathe in the river, the soldiers pass by our village. If they didn’t pass by, we would be at the complete mercy of bandits.”

To bathe, the women also needed to wear rubber sandals. The thongs protected the soles of the feet from microscopic dangers that lurked on the bed of the stream. It was through the soles of the feet that parasites, some of which could be fatal, might enter the body. A woman named Inez who was always accompanied by three small children, gave Alex a pair of black rubber thongs made from an old tire.