Balance of Power

Chapter Thirteen

Barney was starving.

Had it been a week? A month? No, he reasoned, with what was left of his reason. He couldn't go a month without food.

One thing he knew for certain: his water was drugged. After his first screaming, shaking experience with the water, he tried to ignore the little metal pan that slid through a rubber opening onto a small shelf in his cave cell, but when his thirst overcame him he drank. He took as little as possible to moisten his parched, raw mouth and throat because he knew that after he drank, he would have to submit to the dreams.

Terrible dreams they were, confusing, nonsensical hallucinations that stabbed at his brain and burned it from inside. When they came, he tried to remember Denise, Denise in her kitchen, Denise making coffee. Denise kept him alive through the dreams while he convulsed and retched and screamed. She watched him. She smiled. She comforted.

It must be a month, Barney thought as he dabbed one finger onto the surface of the water and carried the drop to his lips. The drug was less virulent at the top of the pan, Barney learned, if he let it sit. He allowed himself no more than ten drops every time he drank, and he drank as infrequently as possible. Still, the dreams and nausea passed through him like air through a screen, and there was nothing Barney could do except to summon the name of his dead wife.

"Denise," he whispered. "Help me."

Light appeared. For the first time in the countless days of absolute darkness since he was first brought to his cell, the door opened.

The flash of high-wattage interior lighting hurt his eyes. He shielded them. "Come," a voice said. So loud. It sounded like cannons to Barney's sound-deprived ears.

Hands groped for him on the cold slime of the floor. He tried to pull himself to his feet. He couldn't stand.

Outside, he curled himself into a tight ball to protect his eyes from the blinding light. A boot kicked him in the groin. "Move."

With the help of four men, Barney stumbled through a vast empty-sounding cave, his eyes closed for fear of being blinded, and out into the welcome darkness of the jungle.

Barney heard the jungle, teeming with noise. The flapping of birds' wings. Their songs. The piercing wails of animals dying miles away. The rustle of salamanders on leaves fallen to the earth. The earth itself exploded with sound: the rush of wind from the ocean, the music of moving water. And the smell. The wonderful smell of green things. The smell of life.

"Water," he said. "Agua. Agua." The young men escorting him turned to their commander, a swarthy guerrilla in Cuban-style fatigues and combat boots. He was the only one besides Barney who wore shoes,

"Move," the soldier repeated, pushing Barney forward.

For a moment, Barney's eyes met those of a young barefoot recruit to his right. He was still a boy, no more than sixteen. The boy's eyes were sad. They reminded him of Denise.

"Es nada," Barney said to him. "It is nothing."

The jungle grew more dense, until only an incidental patch of sky could be seen at the very tops of the trees. Ahead, Barney spotted a small fire.

It glowed like a coal in the darkness, becoming brighter as the squadron dragged him toward it. The fire was in a thatched bamboo hut. Inside the hut, a cot waited for Barney.

His shoes were removed and he was tied down with hemp rope. The young recruit with the sad eyes stoked the fire. Why they felt Barney needed a fire in the sweltering heat of the jungle was beyond him. Then they left him alone.

At nightfall, the music of the jungle changed. The chattering beguine of the day birds gave way to the more somber, dangerous rhythms of night. Night was for the screams of vultures, the ravenous compaints of the big cats.

It was at night that El Presidente Cara De Culo came to Barney.

"Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Daniels," he said smoothly. "Isn't it a small world?" He waited for an answer. Barney could no longer speak.

"I see you're not feeling talkative this evening. Too bad. I was hoping your days of relaxation might prompt you to participate in a discussion of your country. Rather for old times' sake, you know. After all, someday soon it may not exist any more. Tsk, tsk. Things come and they go, don't they Mr. Daniels?" He sighed. "Yes, they come and they go. Just like your dear, departed wife. Remember her? The one who spread her legs for half the island?"

Barney closed his eyes. Denise in the kitchen making coffee, Denise smiling.

"She went so badly, too," De Culo said with mock concern. "First the hand. Ugh, ghastly. Nothing uglier than a screaming woman with a bloody stump for an arm."

Denise in her shawl, Denise carrying his baby.

"Then, of course, she was still alive when the men raped her. Boys will be boys, you know. Although I think she secretly enjoyed it. They all do, the experts say."

"Denise," Barney croaked, the dry sobs racking him.

"As a matter of fact, I distinctly remember someone telling me she was alive when the knife cut her open. Apparently she called out 'my baby' or some such drivel. God only knows who the father was."

"I will kill you if it takes all my life and the next," Barney said slowly, the words rasping out of him like rusted nails.

"Very poetic," De Culo said, smiling. "Well, I must be off. I only stopped by to bring you another present. You left the first on my office floor. Perhaps this will be more to your liking." He picked an iron poker up off the floor and thrust it into the fire. "These are rare around here," he said. "It's from my own personal fireplace. I want you to know that." Then he stood over Barney and with both hands bashed the lower part of his abdomen. "Stinking slime," De Culo said. "I'll see to it you stay alive as long as possible."

"I'll stay alive long enough to kill you," Barney wheezed, his belly knotted and cramping violently from the blow.

Within a half hour, Estomago entered, along with the four men who had brought him to the hut. Once again, the young boy with the sad eyes was with them. Once again he stoked the already blazing fire.

Estomago loosened the top button of his uniform and ran a finger along his red, sweating neck. "It's hot as hell in here," he said to no one in particular. He looked down at Barney, shriveled to almost half his weight, his wrists raw and bleeding from the rope around them.

"Water," Barney rasped.

"No water," Estomago said. "It is not permitted."

The boy stoking the fire looked over to the two of them.

"This is a bad way to die," Estomago said without a trace of De Culo's sarcasm. "Tell us who else knows about the installation, and I will see that you die quickly, with a bullet."

It would have been so easy for Barney to tell him the truth, that the United States knew nothing about the installation. He would die then. It would all be over.

But he could not die. Not until De Culo was dead. Not until his wife's death had been avenged.

"Let me go," Barney said. "Then I will tell you."

Estomago shook his head. "I cannot do that. You must die, soon or late."

"Late," Barney said.

"As you wish." He motioned to the soldier in army fatigues. "Dominquez. The whip."

The soldier approached Barney's cot, a long lizard whip in his hands. He tapped it on his palm expertly, a small smile of anticipation playing on his face.

Estomago moved out of the way.

Slowly, with sensuous pleasure, the soldier teased Barney's skin with the end of the whip. It glistened iridescent green in the light of the fire as it snaked across Barney's chest and legs. The soldier began to breathe heavily. His lips moved, wet with saliva. His eyes half-closed as he played the whip on Barney's genitals. Then he raised the whip, and, with a cry of pleasure, let it fly with a skin-splitting crack on Barney's belly.

Denise. Oh, help me, Denise.

The soldier raised the whip again, his own sex now obviously hard and throbbing, and threw out his arm to his right. The whip coiled and sank into the tender skin on the insteps of Barney's feet.

Sparks flew inside Barney's brain. The pain was aflame, burning, burning. Endless pain. Denise. Don't go. Don't leave me.

The whip snapped high overhead. It slashed him between his legs.

Up from the pit of his stomach, black bile gushed from Barney's mouth and bubbled on his lips. Then he was unconscious.

In a fury, the soldier tore his canteen from his belt and threw its contents on Barney's face to bring him back to consciousness. "You will not sleep now," he roared in almost incoherent Spanish. "Not until I am finished."

Barney's tongue reached for the droplets of water on his face, the pain returning with horrible intensity.

The soldier beat him again and again, each time bringing the whip down with the force of a lover's thrust. "Now!" he screamed. "Now!" He curled the whip in a giant loop that circled the ceiling and brought it down so that it caught the length of Barney's torn body and sent it into convulsive spasms. As Barney's muscles jerked in reflexive agony, the soldier bucked and groaned until he lay spent on the dirt floor, moaning with pleasure.

Barney did not regain consciousness for several hours. He came to with the taste of cold mountain water trickling down his throat. He sputtered and coughed, but kept drinking, for fear that it would be taken away before he could drink enough to stay alive through the night. Hands that smelled of earth and green plants smoothed more of the water on Barney's eyes and forehead.

He opened his eyes. The boy whose job it had been to stoke the fire in the hut made a signal for him to be silent, and gave him another bowl of water to drink.

"I will not forget you, my son," Barney muttered in Spanish.

Immediately a rustling sound outside the hut alerted him to the fact that guards were posted. The boy ducked. The guard peered inside. "He's delirious," he said to an invisible comrade, and went back to his watch.

The boy made a face at Barney as he got up off the floor, then offered him the bowl once again. Barney shook his head. The boy doused his wounds with the water left in the bowl, warning Barney not to cry out in pain.

It hurt, but Barney would not let the boy be killed for helping him. He held his breath and let the water do its work. Then the boy slithered through a slim crack in the rushes of the hut and was gone.

The days went on. The beatings, the interrogations, the whip. Always the whip. Each day, a man would appear with a clamp to break one of Barney's fingers. And each night, the whip.

"What does the CIA know?"

"Eat shit."

"What have you told them?"

"That your mother is a whore."

"Are there any other agents hidden on the island?"

"May your rectum be a pool for the love juice of ditchdiggers."

Sometimes Barney spoke in English, sometimes in Spanish. It didn't matter. As long as he spoke. As long as he stayed alive.

After all of his fingers were broken, Estomago gave him water. It was the drugged water of the cave prison, poisoned and fearful. It made the dreams come.

He began to have a special dream, one that recurred with predictable regularity. The dream was of women.

Each night since he was forced to drink the drugged water, a host of beautiful women, naked and shimmering in the firelight, danced into the hut and surrounded him, smoothing their fragrant hands on his face, rubbing their breasts and lips on him. Each night they came and left without a word, to return the next night, feathery and lovely.

The beatings stopped. He was given water four times a day. During the daylight hours, the soldiers would come to stoke the fire and give him water, and at night they were replaced by the women, smiling, dancing, tantalizing.

He began to heal. His rope-burned wrists were bandaged, so that his only bondage was a rope around one ankle. He began to crave the water.

The dreams were not so terrible any more. They were pleasant. Confusing, crazy, colorful dreams. Who cared? What was so great about reality, anyway? Barney looked forward to his four bowls of water. They made the world fuzzy and pretty. They made the world nice.

Even the soldiers were nice. They began to smile at him. They brought him food, first an easily digestible paste made of mashed vegetables, then soft bread and fruit, then good meals of army rations. And throughout all the dishes was laced the delicious dreams in the water.

Everyone smiled. Everyone was happy. Except for the young boy who stoked the fire. What was with him, anyway, always staring at Barney as if he worried the sky was going to fall? Such a worry wart, for such a young boy. Maybe he was just a gringo hater. Well, it took all kinds of people to make a world, good and bad, and what difference did it make, anyway?

Barney began to wonder what life was like outside the hut. Had he ever been outside? It seemed that his world began and ended there, hi that thatched roof paradise with the wonderful water. Well, that was fine with him. Especially if the women kept coming around.

They did. Now they spoke to him, too, sweet words of comfort and flirtation.

"We like you very much," a very blonde girl said. Did she look familiar? Of course, she had been coming into the hut since day one. No, a voice inside Barney said. Familiar from somewhere else. Get lost, Barney told his voice. There is nowhere else. The voice went away.

"I like you too," Barney said happily. "I like everything."

"Well, I'm going to do something you'll like extra-special," the thin blonde said, and the other girls giggled.

"Oh, boy," Barney said, clapping his hands together. "What is it? A cookie?"

"Better than that, honey." She knelt between his legs and took him in her mouth, rocking, pulling, sending shivers up his back with her naughty little tongue.

"Gee whiz," Barney said. "You sure were right. This beats just about anything. Think I could have some water?"

"Sure, angel," another woman said, and gave him a big, long drink. It made everything even better.

Then, before he knew it, a whole lot of other gorgeous naked women were making love to him, too, laughing, probing, kissing, touching. And all he had to do was lie there and drink that magic water. Heaven on earth.

They played games. If Barney won the game, the women would see to it that he felt good. If he lost the game, they would make him feel good anyway. The games were fun.

"Okay," the blonde girl said one night. "I have a new game to play."

"Oh, boy," Barney said.

"First, you may have water."

"Yea." Barney drank. "I drank it all down," he said proudly.

"That's a very good boy, Barney."

"Good good Barney," the girls chanted in chorus of approval. Barney beamed. He knew this was going to be a fun game.

"Now, I'm going to say a word, and then you say the first thing that comes. Okay?"

"Sure," Barney said. "That's easy."

"Good. Now here's the word. Ready?"

Barney nodded enthusiastically.

"Girls."

"Fun," Barney said, rolling his eyes. The women all laughed.

"That's correct, Barney," the blonde said. "Girls are fun. Now, here's another word."

"Ready, set, go."

"Okay. El Presidente Cara De Culo."

"Huh?"

"De Culo."

"I don't know that word," Barney said, his face squishing up to burst into tears.

"There, there," the blonde girl said, stroking Barney's head. "It's all right. That was a hard word." The rest of the women made sympathetic noises. "I'll tell you what it means, and then you can say the right thing, okay?"

"I love you," Barney said.

"You little sweet thing. El Presidente Cara De Culo is the greatest man on earth. Who is he?"

"The greatest," Barney said.

"Wonderful. You get a kiss." All the women milled around to kiss him. "Ready for another word?"

"Sure."

The blonde looked into his eyes. "Denise," she said. The women were silent as Barney struggled with his thoughts.

At last, his face lit up. "I got it! I got it!"

"What?" the blonde woman asked flatly, her eyes cold.

"De niece is de daughter of de uncle," Barney said. And everyone kissed and hugged him.

"That's wonderful, Barney. You're such a smart boy."

"You bet."

"How about this? CIA."

"CIA?" Barney was confused. "I think I work for the CIA." He stuck his finger in his nose to think. "But I don't work. I play."

"You used to work for them, darling. But they were bad, bad people."

"Very bad?"

"Awful. They beat you up."

"The soldiers beat me up."

"They did not!" The women frowned. Some turned their backs on him. "You're bad, Barney. Bad for thinking the soldiers hurt you."

"They whipped me with the big snake. They hurt my hands," Barney said helplessly.

"That was the CIA. Not the soldiers."

Barney's eyes widened in confusion. He was sure it was the soldiers. "Maybe they were different soldiers," he offered.

"That's right," the blonde said, brightening. All the women kissed him. "Good Barney," they said.

"Yeah. Other soldiers. CIA soldiers. Bad."

"De Culo, the greatest man on earth, made them stop. Now soldiers are nice to you."

"De Culo good, CIA bad," Barney said.

"The CIA is still near," the woman whispered.

"Here? Here?"

"Yes."

"Where?" He looked anxiously around the room.

"We don't know. Tell us, Barney. Tell us where they are, so they don't come again to hurt you."

"I... I don't know. What's the answer, lady?"

"Come on. You know."

"Huh-unh." Barney shook his head vehemently.

"Maybe he's the only one," the woman said quietly to her associates. "Okay," she said louder. "Here's another word."

"I'm tired of this game."

"Just one more. Installation."

Barney yawned. "Installation is what daddy puts around the house to keep out the snow," he said. "Hey, when's it going to snow?"

The women ignored him, chattering among themselves.

"That's all, Barney. You've been a good boy."

"How about some ficky-fick?"

"Later, sweetheart. We have to look for CIA men, so they don't come to harm our Barney."

"CIA bad," Barney confirmed. "Ficky-fick good."

"Drink some water," the blonde said, and led the women outside.

"He doesn't know anything," the blonde later told Estomago. "You might as well kill him and get it over with."

"El Presidente wants us to go through with this."

"It's pointless."

"But it is a direct order, Gloria."

Gloria Sweeney shrugged. "Have it your way."

"My way keeps you out of working at the installation, remember," Estomago said with a threatening swagger.

"Yeah. Thanks a heap, big shot. I suppose working at that whorehouse was your idea of a great career opportunity."

"Better than being shot, like the other women. Or perhaps you would prefer their fate."

A nervous tingle shot through Gloria's spine. "Not at all, Robar, honey. You know I was just joshing. I'm grateful for everything you've done for me." She caressed his thigh. "And I just love being sweet to you."

"That's enough," Estomago said, clearing his throat. "We'll save it for later."

"Anytime you say, jumbo." She left him to bathe in a stream and wash the stink of fear off her.

That night, a soldier wearing a big painted sign reading CIA hanging around his neck entered the hut to remove Barney's fingernails.

The next night, another soldier, similarly identified, came to beat him within an inch of his life.

The food stopped coming. The women stopped coming. The smiles ceased. Only the water remained. And the smoldering fire.

Bound again by abrasive rope around his wrists, Barney cried and asked for his mother.

"We hate your mother," a soldier said, and slapped him hard across the face. "This is what the CIA thinks of you and your mother. Your mother fucks gorillas."

"CIA bad, bad," Barney wailed.

"You didn't tell the good soldiers that we were here," the soldier said, "so we came to hurt you."

Barney looked from face to face around the hut. They were all in there with him, all the soldiers and women. They shook their heads sadly as the bad CIA man walked deliberately to the fire and removed the glowing poker.

"The CIA is going to hurt you now unless you tell us where the other CIA men are."

"Don't know," Barney said as the man walked closer and closer to him, the poker gleaming red.

"We're very bad men," he said, stepping so close that Barney could smell the burning cypress wood sticking to the end of the poker. "We want you to remember who we are."

"CIA," Barney said. "Very bad."

The soldier lifted the poker directly above Barney's stomach. "Very bad," he said. "For you." And he brought it down to trace the letters CIA on Barney's burning belly, the stench of incinerated flesh filling the hut as Barney screamed his last memories away.

Two days later, Barney's eyes opened to see the barrel of a magnum pointed directly at them.

"He knows nothing," Estomago said. "Let us end this charade now and be done with it."

"Hey, I've got an idea," Gloria said. "Want to have some fun with him before he goes?"

"Fun. You always think of fun."

"No, really. This'll be a gas." She whispered into Estomago's ear.

He laughed. "Why not?" he said, tucking the magnum back into his thigh holster. "It will be amusing for the men."

He shook Barney out of the fog that had come back to reclaim him. "You. Get up. You are free."

"Free?" Barney said, not sure what the word meant.

The soldiers unbound his wrists and led him, wobbling, to the grounds outside the hut. There they tied another length of rope around one arm, this time a longer, thinner one.

"You will perform the ritual of the bat," Estomago said. "For it, you will fight a man while blindfolded and bound to him by this length of rope. If you kill him, you will be set free."

"Fight," Barney mumbled, looking vaguely at the red gashes on his stomach which had already filled up with pus.

The blonde woman giggled. "Find him someone cute to fight, honey. That'll make it more interesting."

Estomago pointed to the young recruit with the sad eyes. "Him?"

"Perfect."

He signalled the boy to advance. Silently he came into the circle where Barney waited, weaving unsteadily on his feet. The boy's arm was tied to the rope. Blindfolds were placed on both men.

"Here are the knives," Estomago announced, placing a curved killing knife in each of their hands. "When I give the command, the two of you will fight to the death." He turned to one of the soldiers. "Get your rifle ready," he said quietly. "If the American should win by a freak accident, I do not want him to leave alive."

"Yes sir." The soldier obeyed, disengaging the safety catch on his rifle.

"Very well," Estomago shouted. "Begin!"

In a crouch, the boy circled Barney, who poked hesitantly at the air. The crowd laughed.

"Hsss!" the boy whispered. "This way." He led Barney to the edge of the circle. The spectators cleared the way. He slashed at Barney, narrowly missing him, even though Barney could barely walk.

"That boy fights almost as poorly as the American," Estomago said, his belly shaking with mirth.

The boy slashed again, this time falling to the ground and rolling close to the jungle edge.

"Birds," Barney said.

"We are close to the forest," the boy whispered. "Pretend to fight me. I will take you out of here." He cut into the air again and inched closer to the edge of the clearing.

Barney fell.

"Kill him, kill him!" the women in the crowd shouted.

The boy lunged. "Get up. Quickly. Hurry. It is time."

Barney scrambled to his feet as the crowd crooned with excitement. "Perhaps he will give us a show, after all," Estomago said. "But you are both too far away for us to see well," he shouted to the two men. "Come back this way."

"Now," the boy said, tearing off his blindfold and Barney's. "Try to keep up with me." He sprinted through the jungle like a gazelle on his long young legs while Barney dragged behind, the rope forcing him to keep pace. "Come." Two shots rang out behind them.

Branches tore at Barney's open wounds. Each step burned his damaged feet like hot coals. His broken hands could barely hold the knife, but he knew he must hold it. He knew nothing any more, remembered nothing except that this boy was a friend and that he had to hold on to the knife and run, run as he had never run before.

The boy cut the rope between them. "I know a small clearing not far from here," he said. "You can rest there, and drink good water to make you well." He pushed Barney ahead.

At the clearing, where a small waterfall fed into a stream from underground caves, they stopped. "Do not drink yet," the boy said. "We will wait in the cave for nightfall. Estomago's men are not far behind."

Barney opened and shut his eyes to try to clear his head. Everything was filmy, unreal.

"Trust me," the boy said as he pulled Barney into a small cave to wait.

It was damp in the cave, and Barney's cramped position hurt his burns, but the boy had said to trust him, so he trusted him. In time, he slept while the boy watched and guarded.

He shook Barney awake. "Come. It is time for us to leave."

"Wait," Barney said, touching the boy's arm. "Why are you helping me?"

The boy looked at him with his sad, dark eyes. "Denise Saravena was my friend," he said. "After my mother died, Denise brought us food until I was old enough to join the army."

"Who is Denise?" Barney asked.

After a moment, the boy said, "Let us wash your wounds and drink at the waterfall. Then we must go. I know a small mountain village north of Puerta del Rey where we will be welcome."

They drank at the foot of the waterfall. Barney let the cold water run over his bare feet and stomach, washing away the putrefaction that had begun to develop in the burns.

It felt good. Barney's head began to clear. He tore his shirt to make a bandage for his hand so that he could hold the knife better. He tore off strips of cloth to cover his feet. As he was splashing water over his head and neck, the boy whirled around, his knife poised for throwing.

Out of the forest ambled a chimpanzee, chattering and running in a zigzag. The boy sighed.

"You know what you're doing with that knife," Barney said, relieved.

The boy lay on his stomach to drink. "No man knows more than the jungle," he said. He waded into the water to wash. Then the shot came and sent the boy sprawling into the mud at the other side of the stream, a hole the size of a grapefruit in his back, his thin legs twitching for a moment before he lay still.

Barney saw the soldier before he had a chance to turn around, so by the time he turned, his knife was already spinning in the air and came to rest with a thwack in the soldier's chest. The chimpanzee at the other end of the stream screamed and scurried noisily into the jungle as Barney scrambled back into the cave. Moments later, when the other soldiers appeared, they followed the noise of the chimpanzee. And Barney was safe to look on the lifeless form of his friend, a boy young enough to have been his son.

He waited an hour, staring all the while at the dead boy who had saved his life. None of it made any sense to him any more. Strangers come and then they go, and some of them hurt you along the way and some help you. And some even die for you. But why, God, why him? Why not me? I don't remember half my life, and this boy didn't even get to live it. Why didn't you take me instead? he said to himself, as he dug a shallow grave for the boy with a rock beside the stream.

Then, without thinking, without caring, he wandered aimlessly into Puerta del Rey the next morning, stopping to spend a day and a night in a sleazy cafe that served him three bottles of tequila in exchange for his brass belt buckle.

And after the three bottles were empty, Barney felt good for the first time in all the life he could remember. He felt so good that he called a press conference in the middle of town to say that the CIA was bad. The CIA was in Hispania. The chief of police, somebody named Estomago, looked surprised to see him, although Barney didn't know the man from Adam. He didn't want to know anybody. The CIA was here. The CIA was bad. And who the hell cared?