White Cargo

20

At first there was just the pain. then the cold crept in, and the cold became more pain. Then, before he was fully conscious, the shivering started, which increased the pain, which finally jolted him awake. He opened his eyes, then quickly closed them again. The light was too harsh. With some difficulty, he got to one elbow, opening his eyes for brief moments, allowing his pupils to close down to where he could bear the light.

He was lying on a rough concrete floor, entirely naked, in a small space enclosed by two walls of concrete and two of chain-link fencing. There was no furniture of any kind. He sat up and started rubbing his upper arms rapidly, trying to dispel the chill. The door must be behind him, he reckoned, but when he tried to turn and look at it, he got a thunderbolt of pain in his neck and left shoulder.

Down the hall a door opened and footsteps rang on the concrete, accompanied by a low conversation in Spanish. The door behind him rattled open, but he still could not turn to see who was entering. A baldheaded man in a blue suit appeared in his vision and spoke some words to someone behind Cat. A blanket was thrown over his shoulders, and hands pressed him to lie down on the floor. The man in the blue suit produced a small flashlight and shone it into Cat’s eyes, one at a time. He felt Cat’s limbs and turned his head gently. Cat coughed out a yell.

“What is your name?” the man said in heavily accented English.

“My name is Ca... ah, Robert Ellis,” Cat managed to croak.

The man spoke rapidly to the people behind Cat, and someone responded in what seemed to him slower and more awkward Spanish. He found himself being expertly lifted, laid on a stretcher, and covered with another blanket. He was wheeled rapidly down a hallway, through another door, and through a larger room. Another door opened, they were briefly outside, then the stretcher was put into an ambulance and an attendant climbed in beside it. Shortly, the ambulance began to move.

Cat closed his eyes and tried to relax, hugging the blanket to him. Eventually, the chills stopped and, in spite of his overall soreness, he fell into a light doze. He was aware of fast driving, of traffic, and of the silence of the man who sat next to him. He wondered if the man spoke English, but he didn’t feel like conversation, himself, so he said nothing. He reckoned that wherever he was going was better than the place he had just left.

He woke as the ambulance stopped, then started again. Through a crack in a curtain he saw the top of a heavy iron fence as the ambulance drove through. The doors to the rear of the vehicle opened, and two men, one of them in a suit, rolled the stretcher out and through a door. They were in another hallway for a moment, then in an elevator, going down.

Another man shone another flashlight into his eyes and probed his body. Cat answered with loud grunts when the probing became painful, as it rather frequently did. Then the stretcher was wheeled into what Cat recognized as an X-ray room, and he was lifted onto a cold table where pictures were made. He felt relieved to know that he was in a hospital instead of a jail. The doctor and nurse, both Latino, sat him up and got him into a hospital gown, then he was placed back on the stretcher and wheeled down a hallway to a room and lifted onto a bed. The nurse tucked him in, but nobody said a word, and as soon as he had been made comfortable, he was left alone.

Cat lifted his head and tried to look around the room, but the effort defeated him. The room was small, but though sparsely furnished, it seemed to be in a real hospital and not in the medical ward of a prison. He closed his eyes and tried to rest without thinking. He was not ready to confront his situation, to try and figure out what to do next. He was aware of a murmured conversation outside the door.

A few moments later someone entered the room. Cat was too weary to raise his head, but there was a clanking noise, and the bed lifted him into more of a sitting position. A man in a gray, pin-striped suit stood at the end of the bed, looking at him with an expression of distaste, even disgust. He had closely cropped crew-cut hair, thick eyebrows, a square jaw, and a nose that had once been broken and had healed badly.

It had been, twenty-five years, but Cat knew him. “Jesus, Hedger,” he said, managing a small laugh, “you still getting your haircuts at Quantico?”

“Catledge,” Barry Hedger said. He managed to make it both a greeting and an accusation.

“Am I in a hospital?” Cat asked.

“You’re in the staff infirmary of the American Embassy, and damned lucky to be. You’re lucky to be alive, too, You don’t wear a pistol through a metal detector in any airport in the world, don’t you know that? The cops down here would just as soon shoot you for that sort of thing.”

“Thanks for bringing me here,” Cat said with feeling. “How did you know?”

“Your friend Señorita Greville,” he nearly spat the name, “called me from the airport. I was in a meeting with the Ambassador, but she was insistent.”

“Is she here?”

“No. I don’t know where she is.”

“We’re both at the Tequendama. Can I call her?”

“There’s no phone in this room, and you probably don’t feel like moving around. I’ll have my secretary call her. What should she say?”

“Just that I’m okay, and I’ll call her there as soon as possible. Oh, ask her to try and find out where the airplane went.”

“Airplane?”

“She’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“I expect she will, but I don’t. What the hell are you doing, anyway?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I don’t doubt it. A short story wouldn’t cover somebody who’s travelling, armed, in a South American country, with a false passport and seventy-one thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in his pocket.”

Cat winced. “You’re right, that wasn’t very smart. I was trying to catch up to somebody; I didn’t think.”

The doctor walked into the room carrying an X-ray film. “Nothing broken,” he said to Hedger, “but a hell of a lot of bruising. They worked him over pretty good.”

“No more than he deserved,” Hedger replied.

“When can I get out of here?” Cat asked.

“We’ll keep you overnight, I think,” the doctor replied. “Let’s be sure there’s no concussion. You can go tomorrow, if you feel up to it.”

“He’s not going anywhere until I say so,” Hedger snapped. “Thanks, Doc, that’s all.”

“I’ll send you a painkiller and something to help you sleep,” the doctor said to Cat, then left.

Hedger turned back to Cat. “You’re still under arrest,” he said, “but I managed to get you released to my custody. You’re not to leave the embassy compound without the permission of the Chief of Police of Bogotá.”

“What’s going to happen? Will I be prosecuted?”

“Probably.” Hedger turned and walked to the door. “I’ve got some phone calls to make. I’ll find you a lawyer, who will probably want you to cop a plea and take a shorter sentence. There’s not much question of your guilt. You’ll have the weapons charge, of course, at least one on resisting arrest, and one on violation of customs regulations — failure to declare all that money. You didn’t declare it, did you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I didn’t think so. Get some rest; you’re going to need it. I’ll talk to you later.” He left the room.

Cat closed his eyes. Christ, he had really blown it. He wasn’t going to be any help to Jinx in jail. Maybe Meg would keep working on it. He needed her now more than ever. She might be his last chance. He closed his eyes and tried to stop thinking.