Passenger 19

FOURTEEN

After a full day in the field, Davis returned to Bogotá on what was becoming his regular flight, the last inbound chopper before nightfall. In his room he showered and changed into fresh clothes, preparing for an evening session at investigation headquarters. Before returning to El Centro, however, he allowed a few minutes of down time. He eased into the room’s only chair and fired up Jen’s iPod. Collective Soul was next on her playlist, a band he’d heard of, and a soothing track flowed through the wires to sweep clear his cluttered head.

It had been a frustrating afternoon, nine hours of stumbling through rain forest with no noteworthy finds. At least none that changed his outlook. Davis rose briefly to pull the curtains back from the room’s only window, and for the first time since arriving regarded the second-floor view. Amber-hued lights played the cityscape of Engativá, the northern Bogotá district that surrounded the airport. The neighborhood was a mix of low-rise businesses, apartments, and a shotgun assortment of restaurants and churches. At this hour the buildings were no more than shadows, and in the valleys between, a vibrant midevening rush played out, the streets alive with traffic and bright-burning neon. Collectively it was like a visual static, light and movement with no cohesion, no common theme or purpose. Not when taken as a whole. But each element made sense in its own right. You only had to look closely, patiently to see the details.

He returned to the chair, earbuds still in place, and tapped his fingers along with the percussion. Davis closed his eyes and imagined Jen doing the same. He had seen it before, his daughter sprawled on the couch with her eyes shut, drumming to a beat. Then the vision dimmed and his fingers went still.

Try as he might, the approach that had comforted him last night was hopeless. Tonight Davis was beyond rescue. The melodies seemed broken, the warm images of Jen interrupted. Instead he found himself logging his paternal shortcomings, which wasn’t hard to do. Not involved enough when she was young. Overbearing after Diane’s death. If they’d only talked more. Just talked.

What anchored in his mind at the end was not a list of his failings, or even the issue of Jen’s fate, which was a cyclone all to itself. Nor was it the burdens of a schizophrenic investigation. The menace that overshadowed everything lay farther afield. Farther to the north.

He felt as if he’d been standing at the edge of a cliff for two days, but was only now opening his eyes. He considered the executive jet he’d taken from Andrews. A State Department flight making a scheduled run to Bogotá. That’s what Larry Green had said, and probably what he’d been told. Davis knew otherwise. The pilots were on-call contractors, and there had been no one else on board. Nothing else on board. No passengers or cargo or secure diplomatic pouches for delivery to the embassy. Someone had chartered a G-III, a very expensive bird, for no other reason than to launch him toward Colombia like some kind of guided missile. Next had come the satellite data to pinpoint the crash site. How many times before had Davis asked for such information through NTSB channels? It usually took weeks of infighting and interdepartmental memos just to get a request approved. The result this time — he and Marquez were buried in hard data in less than an hour.

Finally there was his conversation this morning with Larry Green, when his boss mentioned he’d been getting heat for information on the crash. It had been a trigger, causing Davis to do something he’d never done before — hold back the truth from a friend.

He removed the earbuds and walked to the bedside. Setting down Jen’s iPod, he picked up the other device on the night-stand — the phone that had been waiting for him when he arrived in Colombia. His own mobile would never have worked here, but without so much as filling out a standard government request form, he’d been issued a replacement. A woman from the embassy stopped by and left it for you this afternoon.

Now there was some efficiency.

Jammer Davis had spent a career in the military, followed by an afterlife with the NTSB. By virtue of that background, he was a bona fide expert on labyrinthine bureaucracy and administrative ineptitude. He had taken part in dozens of investigations, and in every case made requests for information and equipment. Any fulfillment at all — set aside timeliness and accuracy — was cause for celebration.

And today?

Today he seemingly had the entire United States government at his disposal. A request for a pencil would get him a pallet-load within hours. Ask for a little flight support for aerial photos, and he’d probably get a carrier battle group. He was the beneficiary of a stacked deck, only the cards were being dealt by some unseen hand.

What the hell is going on?

He sat on the side of the bed, and for a long time stared at the room’s deepening shadows. Like any detective, his goal was to shine light on things, to peel away layers of confusion and obfuscation until the truth became clear. Yet every time he made headway here, the world got darker. He sensed a greater cataclysm, something bigger than one airplane hitting a jungle. He wondered if Marquez or Echevarria knew anything about it.

Right then Davis reached a decision. He put on his boots and stood, then ordered his phone to check for e-mail. He didn’t wait for the results. Leaving the phone on the nightstand, he pocketed his room key and closed the curtains. Davis slipped outside, closing the door softly and leaving the room light on.

It was seven that evening when Davis bypassed the restaurant across the street, postponing an urgent request from the well of his stomach. He took a cab downtown, asking the driver to drop him in an area where retail stores remained open late. Twenty minutes later he was delivered to someplace called Centro Comercial Andino. It was on the east side of town near the base of the mountains, a three-story mall whose directory boasted the likes of Pandora and Swatch, a place that would have looked right at home in Indianapolis or Atlanta. Davis settled with the driver in dollars and walked west along a wide boulevard, a four-lane affair that was busy in the early evening.

His countersurveillance tactics were rudimentary at best. Davis was not a trained spy, but he doubled back twice and watched for anyone who mirrored his movements. He drifted with the flows on the sidewalk, kept an eye out for recurring faces, and, perhaps in an ode to paranoia, even went to the trouble of stepping on and then off a municipal bus. Satisfied he was alone, he turned away from the mall, passing a busy faux British pub, and rounding a cemetery where every mildewed grave marker seemed to be topped with fresh-bundled flowers. After fifteen minutes of maneuvering he found what he wanted, a second-tier commercial strip. He steered into a family-operated convenience store that sold a little bit of everything, and emerged, one hundred and fifty U.S. dollars later, with two prepaid burner phones.

Walking back toward the mall, Davis activated the first phone. He boarded a busy escalator, and as he rose dialed one of the few phone numbers in the world etched into his private cloud memory.

On the third ring Anna Sorensen answered.