Passenger 19

THIRTY-SIX

The jungle is a black place on a moonless night, darker still when one is entombed in a thick-walled room during blackout conditions. That was one of many new thoughts coursing through Kristin Stewart’s head as she lay in bed unable to sleep.

The blackout was taken seriously, evidenced earlier when she’d heard a soldier outside threatened with execution for lighting a cigarette. “The Americans can see that!” someone growled outside her door. Was it true? she wondered. Could spy planes and commandos be searching for her right now? Her father would not sit by idly — not when so much was at stake for him.

For a girl from the suburbs of Raleigh there were new sensations everywhere. If the jungle was dark, it was anything but silent. She’d tent-camped a few times in state parks back home, yet never had she witnessed nature in such primitive essence. For six nights she had lain awake to the call of birds, the keen of insects, frenzied cries from creatures under attack. She’d smelled the sweet scent of rain and the rich tang of decay, environmental cycles learned about in high school put vividly on display in her fern-carpeted surroundings. It seemed an impenetrable place, a living fortress of jade. But might that very imperviousness also serve in reverse? Could it not mask an assault should an elite Special Forces team arrive in the middle of the night to effect a rescue? Kristin was no expert in such things, which only made her imaginings that much more frightful.

She rolled to the side and pulled up a blanket to cover her naked chest.

“What is wrong, my love?” said the man next to her.

A light flicked on, a mobile phone screen called to life — who used a flashlight anymore? Against utter blackness the tiny screen cast the room in an unearthly blue-white hue. The meager furnishings already seemed familiar, as did the two square windows covered with plastic and duct tape. She saw their rations of food on the table, still in plastic shopping bags, and the teasing claw-foot bathtub in the corner that begged for a water supply. Finally, with a tilt of her head, she saw Carlos Duran.

In the dim light his long hair and beard were unchanged, the same as when she’d met him one year ago — seated in front of her in the auditorium on that first day of fall semester, twirling a yellow pencil nimbly in his hand. Psychology 1102, she recalled with amusement. A course he perhaps should have taught. He was twenty-six years old, or so he’d said. For reasons she could not discern, she often now added that caveat when it came to Carlos. Or so he said. Kristin thought he looked older now, and even in the dim, ghostly light she distinguished worry lines feathering from his eyes and a harder set to his jaw. A jaw that moved as he repeated his question.

“Nothing,” she replied, “I’m fine.”

His hand, the one not occupied by the phone, cupped her bottom, then moved up to find a bare shoulder. “You are shaking.” He rubbed slow circles on her back.

“I’m frightened, Carlos. Everything has gone wrong.”

He gave a weary sigh. It was not the first time they’d had this conversation.

He said, “Please believe me — I’m sorry about Thomas. My men got excited. They thought he was armed.”

“I told you he wouldn’t be. They made him check his gun in his suitcase, just as we expected.”

The caressing stopped.

Carlos rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom. He was naked, and it occurred to Kristin that the body she’d come to know so well her sophomore year, the one that had educated her in the disciplines of pleasure, seemed strikingly different now. His face held deeper grooves, and there was weariness in his posture. Worst of all, on the few occasions when their eyes met she sensed a profound detachment. He was a photograph that had yellowed with age, and her feelings for him seemed correspondingly blurred and faded. Or was it only her perspective? She’d fallen in love with the passionate son of a revolutionary leader, a young man committed to reclaiming his country from a corrupt government, and steadfast in his support of the oppressed. Or so he said. The bathroom light clicked on, and soon she heard him using the toilet. Kristin rolled away to face the far wall.

“As for the airplane,” he called out, “I can’t tell you what happened. The passengers must have been frightened. Perhaps they attacked poor Blas, our pilot. What more is there to say? It is a tragedy, but I told you from the beginning — there is always risk involved when one reaches for great things.”

“I know,” she said, “but I thought the risk was on our part. I never realized others would be put in harm’s way.”

He finished, but left the bathroom light on. Kristin heard his naked footsteps pad across the stone floor, then the mattress shifted as he sat on the bed behind her. “It is almost over. The money is on its way, and in a few hours everything will be done. Your father will have paid a steep price for abandoning you, and mine will have the means to better the lives of many Colombians, good people who the government has cast aside. Schools and clinics will be built, children will be saved.” His hand was on her again, this time finding a hip. “Soon you and I will be together again in Charlottesville, two poor college students attending class when we’re in the mood and making love when we’re not.”

She turned back and met his eyes directly. “How long will we keep it up before taking our share?”

Carlos shrugged. “Maybe we should graduate — a year, perhaps two. Long enough for everyone to forget these unfortunate troubles. Long enough for the trails to go cold. The money will wait for us, and one day we will go where we please, raise children, and teach them the right way to live.” He stood and pulled on his pants.

“What about my father — you don’t think he’ll pursue it? Won’t he try to find out who was behind my abduction?”

“Your father will soon be president, my love. He will have far more important things to do than to turn over old rocks in search of dangerous things. He of all people will keep our little adventure a secret.” Carlos reached down and kissed her on the forehead. “When this is done, it is done. It will be in everyone’s best interest to leave the past alone.”

“Won’t I be asked about what happened when I get back?”

“By who? The police are not involved, nor is the FBI.”

“The Secret Service? They lost a man in the line of duty — surely they’ll want to find out who was responsible for his death.”

“Their agent died in a plane crash. That will be the story, and if other ideas arise my father has sufficient connections in the Colombian government to make them disappear.”

“When can I meet your father?” she said.

“Today. He will come for the exchange.”

“What’s he like?”

“He is a bastard, but unlike your father he puts it to good use.”

“You said he helps people — I haven’t seen that. Most of the soldiers outside are younger than us, and they don’t strike me as very ideological. They act like thugs, smoking and drinking when Pablo isn’t there to slap them around.”

Carlos chuckled. “Pablo is my father’s sergeant. He is a real soldier who does what he must to keep the men in line.”

“He frightens me.”

“He is big and ugly, yes, but Pablo understands who is in command. He has fought at my father’s side for twenty years — I trust no one more.”

Kristin closed her eyes. Trust on her part was an increasingly open question. She looked at the scratched dresser where she had, days earlier, discovered a passport while searching for scissors. Carlos’ picture was inside, but the last name on the document was not Duran. So who was he really, this student-lover she thought she knew so well?

The fanciful plan they’d hatched over beer and wings in a Charlottesville pub bore little resemblance to what had played out. It had turned violent and dangerous. Innocent people had died, and she doubted very much that any of the ransom money would find its way to the underprivileged of the nearby villages, save perhaps for a handful of smiling barkeepers and prostitutes.

“What will I tell my mother?” she asked.

“Tell her the truth, that you were treated well.” He slapped her naked haunch and laughed, then pulled on his boots. “I have to go outside and check on things. My father will arrive soon.”

As he moved to the door, she said, “Carlos — there’s one thing I want.”

“What is it?”

“Let me see Jen Davis.”

His head slumped lower. “We have been over this,” he said, terseness in his voice. “It can only complicate things if you—”

“No,” she said, standing her ground, “I want to see her!”

In the dim light she saw a stony expression come over his face. An expression she had never seen before. “You will see her in the morning. After the money comes, she can go back to America with you if that’s what you want.”

“What about you?”

“I told you earlier — I must join my father’s little band of brothers when they vaporize into the jungle, but it won’t be for long. Only until things are safe. For now we must keep Jen isolated. The less she sees and knows, the better it is for everyone.”

“No, Carlos. I—”

“Enough!” he said harshly. Carlos took two strides toward her and spoke in a whisper, his words taking a slow cadence. “She should never have been part of this. I still don’t understand why you told her to claim your identity on the airplane.”

“I was frightened. I expected you to be there, and they’d just killed Thomas. I didn’t know any of those men, and everything happened so quickly.”

He heaved a sigh of exasperation. “All right, let’s put it behind us. But this is a problem of your creation. I will deal with it as I see fit.”

“If I hadn’t gotten Jen off that airplane she’d be dead.”

She saw a flicker of something in his eyes, but it dissipated quickly. She’d seen it once before, in Virginia, when the meth-head who lived above his apartment came to the door with a gun in the middle of the night and accused Carlos of stealing his stash. She’d sensed a menace in Carlos’ gaze that night, and gone quickly to call 911. While she was in a back room retrieving her phone, the situation had defused, ending uneventfully. Carlos assured her there was no need to call the police after all. And there wasn’t — not until two nights later when the addict’s drug-infused body was found on the concrete sidewalk beneath his fourth-floor balcony. It was the kind of accident that surprised no one, least of all the Charlottesville police whose detectives never so much as knocked on their door.

As she looked at him now, his features seemed to soften.

She said, “Jen will come with me tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

A kiss on her cheek, and Carlos disappeared.

She fell back and put her head on the pillow. Or so he said. She took a deep breath, sensing vestiges of his musky odor. A scent she had once savored now struck differently, activating new synapses.

Much had changed in eight months, since that day during Christmas break when her mother had confessed, divulging the identity of her father. It explained the new house in Raleigh, and the sudden lack of handwringing over out-of-state tuition. Her mother had made a deal with the devil, a binding agreement that would guarantee them a comfortable life. All we have to do is keep quiet. That had become her mother’s mantra. Kristin’s own response, however, had been very different.

Why doesn’t he want to see me?

That was the question she’d never been able to shake, ringing as loudly now as it had when she’d first put it to her mother on Christmas Eve. Her father had always been characterized by her mother as an irresponsible drifter, a romantic mistake named Carl whose last name she’d never known. That blank slate in Kristin’s mind, held lifelessly in place by a token name, had turned out to be something very different indeed — a man destined to be president of the United States. A man whose telegenic face was on the news every night, and whose eloquent words were quoted each day in the papers. A man featured on the cover of Time and Rolling Stone in the same month. A man whose campaign called their house asking for contributions.

All we have to do is keep quiet. How could anyone be quiet in the face of such lies?

There were times Kristin wished it had been the drifter. A vagabond ne’er-do-well would have been far preferable to a man who knew full well of his daughter’s existence, yet who ignored her in the advancement of his own glory. Irresponsible she could understand. Ignoble she could not. She had cried herself to sleep time and again. It was some months later, when her fitful nights came to be spent aside the dashing young Colombian, that she sought solace in a wine-laden confession. She said nothing about who her father was — not then — but through welling tears Kristin explained her feelings of pain and abandonment.

Carlos had never been more caring or tender.

The next week he began asking questions. He took particular interest in the ever-present men who stood discreetly at the back of lecture halls, watchful and quiet. The following weekend, in the wake of a bleak sorority party and far too many margaritas, Kristin had told him who her father was. Carlos, thoughtful as ever, gave new insights, putting into words what she knew but had tried to ignore — that her mother’s new home and car were a payoff for silence, even a contract of sorts, allowing her father to cling forever to his desertion. For Kristin, the pain was excruciating, but her lover understood. A man who listened and, unlike her father, who was there when she needed him.

It was a night soon after that Carlos had made his own confession. His father was the leader of the Fuerzas Amazonas, a peasant militia fighting the Colombian government from the jungles. Carlos described his father as a tough but fair-minded man, a commander who had sent his only son to America for an education, quietly hoping he would return one day to carry on the struggle at his side. At the age of twenty, Carlos had but one desire — to escape the misery of war. Six years later, high on marijuana in a quiet and comfortable townhouse near the University of Virginia, the insurrectionist’s son confided that the only product of his education had been guilt, a sense that he had abandoned his family and people.

It was Kristin’s turn to comfort her soulmate, to arrest his shame and kiss his face. If there was any redemption in his years in America, a tearful Carlos had told her, it was that he had found her. More kisses were exchanged, and in the small hours of that morning, so many months ago, the young revolutionary had given rise to an idea.

An idea that had now gone terribly wrong.