Devil's Keep (19 page)

“That’s the idea.”

“I can follow him. But will he be suspicious if one trike follows him everywhere? It is not better to use two? Then we can alternate staying behind him. It will not be so obvious.”

A rolling tail. The old guy was thinking like a pro.

“Do you know another good driver?” Favor said.

“My son Erming is as good as me. I’ll arrange it with him. Don’t worry, Ray, we will follow the son of a bitch like fleas on a dog.”

“Have you ever done this before?” Favor asked.

A gap-toothed grin spread across the old man’s face.

He said, “No, but I have always wanted to try.”

Two hours later, Mendonza was up in the second-floor room at the Mirador pension, looking through his camera’s viewfinder. The telescopic zoom was pointed down into the first-floor office of the clinic across the street.

At twelve minutes past six, Mendonza watched as the doctor removed a rack of blood samples from the refrigerator in the clinic’s back room and placed the rack into a cream-colored packing box. Mendonza dialed Favor’s cell phone. They were using new SIM cards, on the assumption that the original numbers had been compromised. He snapped off several photos and said, “Ray, you were right. He’s doing it again.”

A second vial went into the box. Then an ice pack. The doctor closed the carton, sealed it with red packing tape, and took the carton off the counter, and carried it out of sight.

About half a minute later, the doctor stepped out from the front door of the office building.

Mendonza said, “Here he is,” and then, a moment later, “Shit, Ray—no box.”

Favor was sitting in Romeo Mandaligan’s sidecar, parked opposite the Kia, while Erming Mandaligan waited on his own trike, half a block away.

“Where’s the carton?” Favor said into the phone.

“I don’t know,” Mendonza answered. “Can’t see it. Still in the clinic, I assume.”

Favor poked his head out from the sidecar’s enclosure and looked down the street, toward the office building. Nightfall comes suddenly in the tropics, and twilight was now quickly fading to darkness. But Favor spotted the doctor coming up the sidewalk toward the Kia. He seemed to be walking casually. His hands were empty.

“You going with him?” Mendonza asked.

“No. We follow the blood, not the man. Keep watching that front door.”

A couple of times, as the doctor approached the car, he glanced back over his shoulder. Favor realized that he was looking to see if he was being followed.

“He’s nervous,” Favor said. “Someone knows we’ve been poking around; they probably told him to be careful.”

The doctor approached the car, stepped around to the driver’s-side door. Romeo revved the trike’s engine. Favor tapped him on the leg and said, “No. Not yet.”

Romeo shook his head at his son across the street.

The doctor slid in behind the wheel, the Kia’s headlights came on, the car moved into traffic. It turned right at the next intersection and swung out of sight.

“Wait,” Favor said to Mendonza on the phone and to Romeo on the motorcycle seat beside him. But he was saying it almost as much to himself.

Minutes passed. Five minutes. The lights went dark in the clinic. Seven minutes.

“Romeo, let’s wait over here,” Favor said, pointing down the street toward the pension and the clinic.

Romeo blipped the gas and turned the front wheel.

From the pension’s second-floor window, Mendonza had a partial view of the trike, a block and a half away. He could no longer make out the details in the fading twilight, but he knew where it was parked; and when the headlamp swung out into traffic, he knew that this was Favor and the driver, now on the move, coming his way.

He looked back to the office building, where a woman was leaving, stepping out into the sidewalk. The clinic nurse. A bulky shopping bag hung from her right hand.

The blue Kia appeared from around the corner and stopped abruptly in front of the building, where the nurse stood on the sidewalk.

Mendonza said, “Ray, it’s going down, this has to be it.”

The doctor, behind the wheel, leaned over and opened the passenger door. The nurse passed the shopping bag into the car, then stepped back empty-handed and closed the door.

The Kia moved away from the curb, fast.

“Ray, on the move,” Mendonza said.

Romeo Mandaligan was approaching the intersection as the Kia, headed in the opposite direction, turned right.

Romeo pointed at the turning sedan and said, “Ray, that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Favor said. The words had barely cleared his throat when the trike shot forward, swinging into the opposite lane. A pair of headlights filled Favor’s vision through the sidecar’s windscreen. Romeo levered the handlebars left and the trike instantly pivoted and darted out of the path of the onrushing traffic, down the uncongested cross street where the Kia had disappeared.

They were about one hundred feet behind the car. Favor looked back and saw another trike swing in off the main street and accelerate behind them. They went three blocks this way, the Kia with the two trikes following, until the Kia turned left without signaling. Romeo continued straight
ahead, but the second trike swung in behind the sedan.

Favor knew that that must be Erming Mandaligan picking up the tail, but he couldn’t be sure. Every sidecar in Tacloban seemed identical to the next. But this was an advantage, he thought: the driver of the Kia wouldn’t be able to recognize the two trikes as they swapped positions behind him.

Romeo turned left at the next intersection and accelerated up the street parallel to the Kia. It was a residential neighborhood, with no streetlights. The trike’s headlight punched weakly into a low-hanging pall of smoke from cooking fires. The pavement was broken, and the unsprung third wheel of the sidecar slammed down hard in a long pothole. Favor could feel the shock up through his spine.

Favor, looking left, spotted the Kia as they flew through an intersection. They were now abreast of the car and gaining. One block later, Romeo zipped left and then turned in behind the Kia again as Erming’s trike dropped off.

It was a perfect handoff. Favor knew that the driver would never catch the tail now.

Traffic was picking up again as they drove through a busier part of the city. The Kia slowed as it came up on a truck, and Romeo too backed off, slowing enough to let a car and a jeepney pass. The Kia was still visible, easily within contact.

The road headed south along the waterfront. They were leaving the city. The brake lights blazed on the Kia as it turned left onto a wide two-lane.
Favor recognized the road. He had seen it before, a day and a half earlier.

Romeo Mandaligan leaned in close and, over wind and the rapping of the engine, said, “I believe he is going for the airport.”

The call with Mendonza was still open. Mendonza said, “Ray? What’s that?”

Favor said, “Airport, Al. Better haul. I think we’re out of here.”

The package went out by airfreight aboard Philippine Airlines. The doctor brought it into the terminal. Favor didn’t follow him in—he thought that he would be conspicuous in the little place—but Romeo went in to watch, and after the doctor returned empty-handed and drove away, Romeo came back out and reported to Favor that the man had handed the package to an attendant at the PAL counter.

So it was airfreight, and it had to be the evening flight to Manila, the only remaining PAL flight of the day.

Romeo Mandaligan said, “I did good, huh?”

“You sure as hell did,” Favor said.

While Mendonza bought tickets at the counter, Favor went to a nearby window that looked out onto an open shed where several baggage carts were parked. A short conveyor belt ran into the shed from the PAL ticket counter, and two baggage handlers plucked baggage off the belt and loaded it onto the carts. An open bulb hung from the ceiling of the
shed, and the cream-colored package with the red tape stood out in the light.

Favor took out his phone and called Arielle.

He explained what they were doing, following a carton with vials of blood. He asked her and Stickney to bring two cars to the PAL domestic terminal.

They were going to follow the carton to its final destination.

He described the carton and said, “Find the pickup area for PAL air freight and wait for us there. I want somebody watching that package as soon as it shows up. Al and I should be off the plane before the cargo is offloaded, but you never know.”

She said, “Cream color, red tape, about a foot and a half on each side.”

“Correct. I don’t know who will pick it up, but Stick needs to stay with the cars, out of sight. He has definitely been burned.”

She said, “I’m probably burned too, if they have the passport photocopies.”

“I know,” Favor said. “But I want an eyeball on the package, and you aren’t burned the way Stick is burned. You can do this. Be discreet, mix with the crowd. You remember the drill.”

“Dimly,” she said with a small laugh.

“I wouldn’t ask if it didn’t matter. I believe the path back to those two kids starts with that blood.”

“Eyes on the box. You’ve got it,” she said.

When he spoke with Arielle, Favor kept watching the package as it sat on the cart in the PAL baggage
shed. He watched the package as Mendonza returned with boarding passes for seats near the front exit. He watched the package while he ate food that Mendonza brought from a snack bar in the terminal.

A loudspeaker announced first call for boarding of the PAL flight. But the cart with the cream-colored box still sat in the baggage shed, and Favor stayed by the window and kept it in sight until a handler hitched the cart to a small tractor and pulled it out to the waiting plane.

Then Favor left the window and went through the gate. He walked out across the asphalt apron and stood at the bottom of the ramp as the baggage handlers loaded the carton into the belly of the plane, then he walked up the ramp and took his seat beside Mendonza.

The plane touched down a few minutes late, a little after 8:30 p.m. Favor turned on his phone while the plane was still rolling and called Arielle when the jetway ramp rolled up to the door.

She said, “I’m at PAL air freight. It’s near the baggage claim, straight across the concourse from your gate. Get over here as soon as you can. There’s something you need to see.”

“As soon as we’re out. It shouldn’t be long.”

“You did say cream-colored carton, right? Red packing tape, about eighteen inches on a side?”

The passengers on the plane were standing. A flight attendant was opening the hatch, swinging the door open. Favor looked out the window and saw that a baggage tug was wheeling under the fuselage.

“Right,” Favor said. “But the cargo is still in the hold. We’ll be there before the package shows up.”

“Just get over here,” she said.

Favor and Mendonza were among the first half dozen passengers off the plane and through the gate. From halfway across the concourse, Favor spotted Arielle. She was seated near a baggage carousel, reading a magazine. Or seeming to read.

He stopped about twenty paces short of where she sat. It was ingrained training. She gave no sign that she had seen him, but she took a phone out of her purse, tapped a speed-dial number.

In a few seconds the call came in on his own phone.

He turned away from her. She was looking away from him. To a casual observer they were strangers who both happened to be using phones, in a place where almost everyone was using a phone.

She said, “Second shelf from the top, left side.”

Various packages and crates lined the shelves along the back wall of the office. A PAL logo on the glass partly blocked the view, but at second glance he spotted the familiar cream carton and red packing tape.

This wasn’t right, he thought. The carton he had chased through the streets of Tacloban couldn’t be off the plane already.

Then he realized that it was not one box.

“Three?
” he said.

“How about that?” Arielle said. ”It was two just a little while ago. They must’ve put another one up
there when I was waiting for you. I guess we can say three and counting.”

Favor watched as a fourth carton—probably from the Tacloban flight—went onto the shelf beside the others. He realized that the cartons were arriving on flights from other cities around the Philippines. This had to be the daily collection of blood samples from other Optimo offices.

He wanted to keep the cartons in sight, so he could track them to their final destination. But the terminal was clearing out. Unlike the international terminal, this one shut down for several hours a night. There were no more outbound flights until the morning, and just a few still to arrive. Favor knew that as the place emptied, he would be increasingly conspicuous, a foreigner hanging around with no apparent purpose. Arielle and Stickney would be just as visible. Even Mendonza didn’t really fit in.

He walked outside and studied the layout.

The terminal had one passenger exit, a set of doors that opened onto a taxi stand and a loading zone. To one side was a freight dock, large enough to accommodate a single truck. Across the street, a parking area. From the spot, one car could watch the passenger exit and the freight dock.

Favor called Mendonza and Arielle and asked them to join him in the parking lot across from the terminal. Stickney was there already, and they all sat together in one of the two cars that Stickney and Arielle had brought.

Favor said, “We can’t hang around in there watching the cartons, but we don’t have to. We can watch from here to see when they come out. It’ll either be through this front door or the loading dock. And it’ll go down soon. This terminal will be closing after the last flight is in.”

“How do you know it won’t be tomorrow?” Mendonza asked.

“It’s blood,” Favor said, “and somebody went to a lot of trouble to collect it. I don’t know why they want it, but I can’t believe that they’ll let it sit overnight, even if it’s on ice.”

“You don’t need all four of us to watch,” Stickney said.

“Correct,” Favor said. “I thought I’d leave you and Al with one car here. Ari and I will park out on the street, where the terminal traffic exits. You let us know what we’re looking for, we’ll latch onto them there. Give them about half a minute, then you hustle up behind us.”