Payback

address was in Nevas — at the school Lia had gone to, one of the Art Room analysts had noted.

He’d also pointed out that Calvina had taken a flight from Ecuador to Mexico a few days before.

A picture from her passport was included on the next screen. Lia stared at it. It looked to her like the girl she’d seen in the hallway, the one who’d been sick. But of course hundreds or even thousands of girls would go through that school.

Had her name been Calvina?

“Marie?” Lia said to Telach over the Deep Black com system.

“I’m here.”

“This girl the police picked up in Pennsylvania,” she said. “Has she been interviewed?”

“No, the FBI is still en route. We’re setting up our own phone interview with one of our translators in the Art Room.”

“I’d like to talk to her myself,” said Lia. “I’ll put a video bug on the dashboard here so she can see me.”

“We’ll have to see if they have a video hookup. Otherwise you can do it by your com system.”

“I want to see her, and I want her to see me. Have someone go back in the mission tape for the school at Nevas. I talked to a girl there. See if her name was Calvina.”

131

Calvina Agnese—Adnese on her passport — stared as the door of the room in the small police station opened. The officer who had brought her here wheeled in a computer on a small stand, smiling apologetically. He said something to her in English, a long explanation probably, though she had no idea what he was trying to tell her. He’d been very nice since stopping for her on the road, nicer than she expected, even giving her food. One of the men at the station spoke a few words of Spanish, enough to ask who she was and what she was doing on the highway in the middle of the night.

“Running from someone?” he asked.

She’d cringed, then shaken her head. When he asked for identification, she handed over her passport. It seemed to satisfy — him.

She thought they would either put her into jail or send her back home, or somehow arrange to do both. She’d been a foolish girl to dream of being like Senor DeCura; she was just a girl who washed floors and always would be.

The policeman left the room, then returned with a telephone. A long cord stretched out from behind it into the other room. He pulled a keyboard out from the shelf under the computer, then turned it on.

He fiddled with the keyboard. A picture appeared in the center of the screen. It had a whitish-brown tint, and the figure in it moved in jerks and starts. But as Calvina stared, she realized it was the woman she had seen in Ecuador — her angel.

“Hola,” said the woman.

“?Hola?”

“Do you remember me?”

Calvina didn’t answer.

“Should I speak Spanish or Quechua?”

“Spanish.”

“You were in the hallway and I asked if you needed help. Am I right?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Calvina, how did you get to the U.S.?”

“Two men helped me. One was older and very kind.”

“Did the other walk with a cane or crutches?”

“Yes. ”

“Can you describe them please?”

She did. When she was finished, the angel asked her about the truck she had been in. Calvina described it carefully.

“And the men used another car or truck, didn’t they?” said the angel.

“Yes,” said Calvina Agnese, nodding.

“Tell me about the last vehicle they got into,” said the angel, leaning closer to the screen.

132

The city was a confusing tangle of one-way streets, and Tucume feared that he would make the wrong turn every time he came to an intersection. They could hear police sirens in the distance but had seen no police cars since they had left the main roads. Their maps were not very detailed, they had gotten lost several times, and even Babin wasn’t sure exactly where they were.

But they were very close to the center of the city.

“That way, go that way,” said Babin, pointing to the right. “You see the sign? Independence Mall.”

Tucume did not see the sign but turned anyway. Babin leaned forward against the dashboard, looking past him.

“Turn!”

“Where?”

“Just turn.”

He did and found himself on a narrow one-lane street.

“There were police and military trucks on that street. We have to stick to the side roads.”

“Which way?”

“I don’t know,” said the Russian, studying his map.

* * *

Babin had trouble reading the map in the dark but feared doing anything that would attract any attention to them, including turning on an interior light as they drove. He’d mapped the route earlier, avoiding what looked like the larger streets. He wanted to be on Chestnut, he thought, but he couldn’t find it now.

Anywhere nearby would do. They were close to the famed Liberty Bell and the center of the city. His heart pounded crazily; he could feel the pulse throughout his body, throbbing in every bone and muscle.

“Take a right,” he said.

Tucume turned left. They went about halfway down the block, then saw it was a dead end.

“I told you right,” Babin said angrily.

“It was one-way.”

Babin rolled down the window and looked out. “Back up. Back up quickly before someone comes.”

“If you can do better, you drive.” Tucume opened the door and jumped out of the truck.

Babin cursed and pounded on the dashboard. He pulled out his pistol, then realized there was no sense going after the general. What difference would it make a few seconds from now whether the bomb exploded here or a few blocks away?

Babin left his gun in his lap and bent to retrieve the cell phone from the well between the seats. He picked it up, his fingers jittering.

He’d never felt anxiety like this before, the anticipation of revenge, the final payoff to Evans and the CIA people who had betrayed and maimed him.

He pressed his thumb on the button to activate the phone.

“No!” yelled Tucume, suddenly at the open passenger window. In the same instant, Babin felt the general’s fist hit him square in the side of the head.