traditions, had been a great ruler in the north at the time of the Spaniards’ arrival. Sometime after Pizarro beheaded the Inca ruler Atahualpa in 1533, Tucume’s direct ancestor fled the approaching conquistadors and took shelter with an eastern tribe. There the family bided its time, telling stories of past glories and dreaming of future ones.
Tucume had been raised on the stories. Long before he attended Madrid and Miami University, he had memorized the oral poem commemorating the legend of his namesake, Atahualpa. The entire epic was a thing of beauty, but especially poignant were the lines of his beheading. Atahualpa predicted that he would return to avenge his people as Inkarri, the messiah of the earth. Tucume knew in his heart that these words were not fiction but the strongest truth.
But as a thoroughly modem man, Tucume knew better than to rely on stories or even religion for his power. Power came from the ability to destroy, and he alone among the Incas, among the Peruvians, possessed the modern equivalent of the sun god’s arrow: a small nuclear warhead hidden not too far from here.
It might be said that obtaining it had been a matter of luck, rather than fate. Certainly the circumstances argued that. The bomb fell almost literally at the general’s feet. But the tangled weave of events that had brought the warhead to him was so improbable that Tucume was convinced his ancestors had taken a hand. The Incas, and all natives of the land, would rise again, and Tucume, selected by luck or fate, was the man who would lead them.
He began walking again, turning another corner on the path. The man Tucume had come to meet was standing amid a knot of bodyguards about twenty meters away.
“Mr. President!” shouted Tucume, greeting Hernando Aznar as he drew close.
“Still only a candidate,” said Aznar. “And a distant one at that. With a short week to go.”
“A long week,” said Tucume, who knew what it would include.
“You take a huge risk meeting me.”
“Here? Never. This is not Lima, where spies are everywhere.”
“A risk for me.”
“Nonsense. Is it against the law for a candidate to speak to a general? No. Absolutely not.”
“Your contributions—”
“Ah.” Tucume waved his hand. “You are doing extremely well. Extremely well.”
“The papers all say I won’t finish above third.”
This was why they had had to meet; Aznar had become defeatist and needed propping up.
“All of the journalists are on the government’s payroll,” Tucume assured him. “Who else would call the vice president a man of the people? Ramon Ortez, who owns an armor-plated Mercedes and whose wife shops three times a year in Madrid, a man of the people? Victor Imbecile — who votes for a communist anymore?”
As was his custom, Tucume mangled the candidate’s name and his political affiliation: Victor Imberbe represented the Peruvian Centrists, and his moderate views were in no way left of center, let alone communist. In the past, this distortion had pleased Aznar, and he would jokingly add something of his own about one of the other candidates, Bartolo Lopez, who really
“Our polls,” he said. “We have barely twenty percent.”
“And climbing,” said Tucume quickly. “It’s the direction that is important. Ortez has lost votes. They will go to you. Imberbe has barely forty percent. You are catching up.”
“With this many candidates, the lead is insurmountable.”
Not for the first time, Tucume wished that he could have run for the office himself. But the uniform had become a political liability in Peru, thanks to the criminal antics of some who had preceded him.
“You are going in the right direction,” Tucume told his man firmly. “Continue to make your speeches. Do your work. We must all do our work.”
The general glanced toward the knot of aides standing a respectful distance away. Among them were Aznar’s speechwriter — a mumbling Jew from Argentina who had somehow been gifted with a golden pen — and the candidate’s political adviser. Both were secretly on Tucume’s payroll. He called them over, pretending not to know them very well.
“Geraldo, how are you?” he said to the speechwriter. “What are the high points of today’s speech?”
“The poisoners of our country,” said the man, his beaky nose pointed almost straight down. “We must band together to fight them and seize the future.”
“There, you see?” exclaimed Tucume. “What stronger argument can you make? The Maoist rebels are trying to steal our country.”
“People don’t believe the rebels are a serious threat,” said Aznar glumly. “The cities are especially smug, even after the latest attacks.”
“They will see,” said Tucume.
Aznar stared at him, puzzled.
Tucume grabbed the candidate’s arms, bracing him as if he were in the borderlands again, encouraging his men to chase the Ecuadorian scum.
“Peru is counting on you. My people — our people — our ancestors, they are watching and helping you. Look around you; look at this—”
Tucume turned Aznar 360 degrees, shaking his shoulders as he went.
“This is our history and our destiny,” Tucume said. “Peru will be a great nation again. The others will stand up and respect us. Brazil, Argentina, the Ecuadorian dogs. Even El Norte, the demons of America, in the end they will respect us. No longer will we be considered the poor rabble of the world. Peru!”
Tucume ended his speech by staring into Aznar’s face. The man had Quechua blood in him; his features made it obvious. But the European was there, too, diluting the courage that was necessary for greatness.
“I will do my best,” said the candidate.
“Your best will inspire the nation,” said Tucume. “Go.”
5
William Rubens pushed his chair back from the table as the waiter approached. As a general rule Rubens hated luncheons such as these, which he derisively termed chicken and pea affairs. The food was actually poached salmon and scalloped potatoes, but it could easily have been rubber as far as his taste buds were concerned. If that weren’t bad enough, he faced the unwelcome prospect of sitting through three long speeches on the “state of the world” by people who knew less about international affairs than Jay Leno did.
Sensing his self-control slipping, Rubens rose and walked to the portable bar at the back of the room. He ordered a seltzer with a lime twist, then turned to survey the room silently.
“I’d say, ‘A dollar for your thoughts, Bill,’ but you’d probably feel insulted.”
“Debra.” Rubens turned and nodded at Debra Collins, the CIA deputy director of operations or DDO.
“Charming lunch.”
Collins’ tone would have sounded sincere to anyone who didn’t know her as well as Rubens did. Her rise in the CIA had been fueled by a healthy disdain of many of the people she worked for, contempt she kept well hidden. Under oath, Rubens would have admitted that she was smarter than most of the people she worked with and in her own way quite brilliant, especially when it came to manipulating people.
He could speak from first-hand experience: they had been lovers for a brief time some years before. He still rued the mistake.
“Thank you for your personal attention on Peru,” he said. “Your people were insightful.”
“Of course,” she said. “How is that business?”
“Proceeding.”
“An interesting election.”
“All elections are interesting.”
“The president sees it as a comerstone of his South American policy. I hope it proceeds fairly.”
“Yes,” said Rubens.
The CIA had made several officers available for background briefings prior to the current Deep Black mission
