Saturday.” He raised his eyebrows and shrugged as he said it, smiling, perhaps at Cindy’s bad timing.
Diane felt the hand of Mark Grayson at work. “Tell her I’d love to and I’ve got a bottle of wine I’ve been dying to open, but it’ll have to wait until I get some museum business resolved that’s hanging over my head.”
Frank put the phone back up to his ear and repeated almost verbatim what Diane had said. He listened for several seconds. “I’ll give her that argument, but this thing at the museum really has her tied up right now. She’s not been able to go anywhere.” He paused. “I’ll do that and get back to you. Can I speak with Kevin?” The pause was shorter. “Homework, in the summer?” Pause. “Yeah, I’d forgotten about that. I’ll give you a call later.” He pushed the END button and put the phone back in his pocket.
“I suppose you heard that. It looks like you’re right-David must want to pressure you. She was pretty insistent we come for dinner.”
“She was asking you to convince me?”
“Yes.”
“Not being able to talk to Kevin wasn’t a part of it, was it?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.” Frank was pensive for a long moment. “That wouldn’t be like Cindy-unless she’s under a lot of pressure from David. I can tell her no. It’s not a problem.”
“I don’t mind going. But let’s wait a few days and see how much pressure comes our way over it. You know, it could just be her way of letting you know that it’s OK with her if you and I are together.”
“That wouldn’t be like Cindy either. So where were we?”
“Drinking our coffee?” Diane handed him a cup she had dressed with cream and sugar.
“Was that it? I thought we were going to drink it in the bedroom.”
He took Diane’s hand, backed away and led her into the bedroom.
A long while later, Diane lay her head on Frank’s chest, and gently stroked his skin with her fingertips. “Why didn’t you mail the letters?” she asked.
“I wanted to-I wanted to a little too much, and it scared me. I’d been divorced from Cindy for less than two years. I’d been through some rough times. I didn’t trust myself anymore. I didn’t know what I was feeling. Why did you stay gone for so long?” he asked.
Diane didn’t say anything for a long time. Instead of answering, she kissed his chest, then his lips.
“If this is a way of getting out of telling me, it’s very charming.” He slid both arms around her and pulled her on top of him. “And it will work.” He kissed her again.
It was dark in the jungle. One bright spotlight illuminated a circle of the dark gray-green foliage, then another, darting around like the eye of a predator. The music crept in from the distance. Diane heard it and ran toward it. She kept running, and it grew louder and louder until she was surrounded by the engulfing, deafening strains of “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” Where was it? She had to find it. She stopped, looking around her everywhere for the source of the music. The ground; it was coming from the ground. She knelt and dug in the hard jungle soil with her hands until they were bleeding. Fingers dug into her shoulders, dragging her back.
“Diane, Diane. Are you all right? Diane.”
It was still dark, but she could see the bright moon shining through an opening. She sat up, confused for a moment before realizing she was in her bed-with Frank.
Frank reached over and switched on the lamp at her side of the bed. “Are you all right? You were crying in your sleep.”
“I’m fine.” She was cold and shivering. She hugged the bedcovers around her body. “It was just a nightmare.”
He cleared his throat to get the sleep out of his voice. “You want to talk about it?”
“I just need to get a drink of water.” She slipped out of bed and grabbed her silk robe hanging on the footboard.
She took a bottle of water from the kitchen and went into the living room with it and sat on the sofa, pulling a soft faux zebra throw next to her to snuggle up against. Frank came in wearing jeans and an open white shirt. He sat down on the couch beside her.
“I know something bad happened in South America,” he said. He hesitated, as though looking for words. “Something you haven’t wanted to talk about, and I understand that. Sometimes mistakes happen. . ” He trailed off, as if the words he finally found were inadequate.
“Mistakes?” Diane watched him and took a sip of water.
“I’ve heard,” he started uneasily, “that there was some mistake that led to a tragedy, and you lost your job. Whatever happened made it difficult to find another one for almost a year.”
Diane’s heart was still pounding from the dream. “You heard that from your friend Izzy?”
“He heard things. I think he just wanted to give me some kind of heads up.”
“I saw him the other day. We had a break-in at the museum. I felt then that he had some issue with me.”
“He just wanted me to know everything.”
Diane shook her head. A smile that felt more like anger than humor played around her lips. “That couldn’t be true. If he really wanted you to know everything, he would have checked his information. It’s what I would have done for a friend. And you believed him. Is that why you kept asking me if I was sure about my calculations?”
“If I had any serious doubts about you, I would have never asked for your help. I told him he probably didn’t have the whole story.”
Diane looked at Frank for several seconds, his mussed hair, sleepy eyes. Last night was the first really happy moment she’d had in a year. Maybe Gregory was right; she should at least confide in Frank.
“He didn’t have any part of the story right. There was a tragedy last year-a massacre at a mission across the easternmost border from Puerto Barquis in Brazil, in the Amazon. It happened not because I made a mistake, but because I did my job too well. A job I didn’t lose, but resigned. Wait here a moment.”
She went to her nightstand in the bedroom and opened the drawer. It contained only photographs, some in frames, others loose. She brought them back to the living room and curled up at the end of the couch, holding the pictures to her chest.
“Puerto Barquis is a country not many here are familiar with. Early in its history the border started on the west coast and stretched eastward into the Amazon jungle. The coastal port has since been claimed by another country, so it’s now landlocked. The population is composed of Spanish, Portuguese, Germans, Native Indians and various mixtures. It’s been ruled in recent history by a series of strong men, the latest one, Ivan Santos.”
His name felt like a sharp rock in her mouth and didn’t slip easily from her tongue.
“During his rule he massacred thousands of the native population, along with hundreds more who either disagreed with him or were in the way. I won’t go into the whole history, but he was deposed and Barquis had its first free election, watched over by the United Nations. Xavier Valdividia became the first legally elected president, and he had a very good chance of holding on to power. But Santos and his henchmen and his spies inside the government were waiting and plotting for any opportunity to retake control.”
Frank sat silently on the couch facing Diane, listening to what she was saying, a deep crease between his eyebrows. He took a sip of the water she’d left on the coffee table and passed it over to her. She took a long drink.
“I worked for World Accord International. My team collected evidence-we excavated mass graves, interviewed witnesses, discovered and photographed and examined secret torture rooms. We amassed a mountain of evidence about atrocities that Ivan Santos was claiming never occurred, and we were connecting it to him. World Accord was hoping he would be tried and imprisoned so he would no longer be a threat to the elected government of Barquis.
“While I worked there we often stayed at a mission just across the border in Brazil. Our World Accord team shared food, blankets and medicine with them in exchange for their hospitality. Over the years the mission had taken in countless refugees from Puerto Barquis.”
Diane stopped talking. Her eyes filled up with tears. Frank reached for her hand and squeezed it, but didn’t speak. That was a trait Diane admired in him; he knew when not to speak, when to just be there. She took a framed photograph, looked at it a moment and handed it to Frank.
“That’s me and my daughter, Ariel.”
